


Die Verwandlung

by puerile



Series: Game of Clowns [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: (also: this is unbeta'd so bear with me here), Alternate Origin Story, Arkham Asylum, Body Modification, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, More Characters added as story progresses, Origin Story, Psychology, Slow Build, idk if I want to tag this as domestic violence or abuse yet, let me know if you think I should
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:43:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 44,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7802338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puerile/pseuds/puerile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Doctor Harleen Quinzel was assigned her newest patient, she thought she was as prepared as could be, having worked two years as a civilian therapist and almost another two at Arkham Asylum. </p><p>But is she really ready to handle her most notorious patient yet?</p><p>Is he ready for her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wasn't going to write a full origin story but things just started happening and an outline fleshed itself out and before I knew it, I had convinced myself to do a full origin story instead of just a couple chapters. 
> 
> Which means my original idea is now the sequel! 
> 
> Notice that I did not put in the rape/non-con warning. In this fic, though I cannot say for certain about following works in this verse, there will be no direct sexual contact between the Joker and Harleen. Though there will be gestures, obscenities, innuendos, and more, there will be no hetero sex. So if you were looking for graphic smut, sorry, you'll have to wait! 
> 
> I don't own or profit from anything DC. The Joker and Harleen Quinzel are drawn upon multiple media references, but for appearances, they are rendered like they were for Suicide Squad. (Where Margot Robbie kicked ass)
> 
> PS! There is a super quick reference to The Joker Blogs, but blink and you'll miss it!

Harleen took in a shaky breath as she walked through Arkham’s long, pristine white hallway. Her black patent leather heels, all of two inches tall, were the only noise she could hear, echoing and bouncing off the walls. _Just like his laugh, no?_

Harleen tucked a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear, her fingertip brushing against the worn metal of one of her cartilage piercings. Without hesitation, she took it out and pocketed it in her lab coat, then checked to make sure the only other earrings she had left in were her lobes. Not that she believed that there was anything wrong with body modification, she rather enjoyed it; she just needed to appear as professional and collected as she could. It wasn't every day that she would make a first impression on The Joker.

Harleen stopped in front of room 4479, which was the appointed therapy room for the Joker. She had no clue what was behind the guarded door. A man stood on either side of said door, their white orderly uniforms almost blinding against the bright white linoleum floors and sterile walls. She inhaled through her nose and readjusted her glasses before exhaling slowly out of her mouth. She looked at the man nearest her and he silently slid his access card into the door. With the approval, she opened the heavy door and firmly shut it behind herself with a loud click, the locking mechanism echoing around the barren room.

There were windows, albeit barred and made of plastic. In the middle of the room sat two chairs, both stark white, on opposite sides of a white desk with metal legs; both chairs and the table were bolted to the floor. The room smelled cloyingly of antiseptic. Standing out startlingly against the harsh whiteness of the room sat The Joker. He was wearing a straight jacket, his ankles cuffed to the legs of his chair. His face was pale, lips seemingly chapped from this distance, and his hair was a faded green color apposed to the brighter green in every news article about him. His adam’s apple stood out stark against the contour of his throat; Harleen thought she could see his pulse traveling through his artery.

Harleen sat in the chair closest to her, setting down the notebook pad she had brought along, though she was told not to get her hopes up for any progress. According to previous reports, The Joker would just laugh, discuss the depravity of Gotham, or stare out into space. Or worse, keep direct eye contact.

“My name is Doctor Harleen Quinzel, I'll be conducting your therapy from this point on.” Harleen said, doing her best to keep a strong and confident voice, anxiety nowhere to be found except in the slight shake of her left hand. She let the silence sit in the air for a minute.

“Do you have any questions for me?” She hoped that asking a question would elicit an answer. Instead of a vocal answer, she watched the way his head turned, slightly tilting to his left, lips parted to show the silver metal adorning his teeth. Harleen couldn't help herself but look at the tattoos across his face, scanning downwards from his forehead. His eyes were sunken in, his cheekbones and jaw defined; he looked gaunt.

Harleen turned her eyes back to his, a tender light blue, or were they green? A light aqua, like a sandy shallow body of water may look, with slight swirls of vitamin enriched green from the plant life growing from the bottom. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw his lips stretching, his teeth reflecting the too bright light of the room. A smile, not as ostentatious as the tattoo on his hand, but a smile nonetheless.

“Do you have any questions for me?” He echoed. His voice sounded like a raspy wind, the haunt of a loud noise booming at the other end of a tunnel. “You are the psychologist, are you not?” Harleen assumed he would have raised an eyebrow, but he didn't appear to have any.

“Well, yes, I do.” She chirped, trying to contain how eager she felt. She tried not to get her hopes up, however. “I was refraining from divulging too quickly, so as to not have you close up.” Wait, did she really just say that out loud?

The Joker barked out a short and punctual laugh. “Now, isn't that an interesting approach, little Doctor Quinzel. A woman, whom, after being birthed from some PhD program, finds herself thrown into the big bad world crying and wailing, but what's this? No one to hold her, soothe her, just passed through the obligations to get her career off the ground and running. Tell me Doctor, do you know when you were conceived?”

“Well, if I understood your analogy correctly, I switched my major from biochemistry to sociology when I was a junior in college. I wanted a more right-brained focus of study.”

The right corner of his mouth twitched. “Correct you were, dear Doctor. And what career could be more right-brained than that of dissecting the minds of the criminally insane.” He finished his sentence with venom, like a snake hissing at the very notion that his self-declared genius could ever be considered insanity.

Harleen took a second to think. Why did she tell something personal, albeit nondescript, to this criminal? She never delved into her past with anybody. How had she been so stupid as to indulge this little game he was playing?

“Would you allow me to dissect yours?” Harleen said, with the hopes of getting this appointment back on track. She was told by Dr. Arkham himself, though she rarely ever saw the guy despite being here for almost a year, to not find herself spilling her guts to any of the patients, especially the Joker. Apparently, it always comes back and haunts the perpetrator.

“That's a very, _steep_ , request, wouldn't you say Doctor?” The Joker almost leered as he spoke. “What would I get in return?” Harleen felt her eyes narrow behind her glasses.

“Does not being on death row suffice?”

“Oh come now, you and I both know, hell every doctor in this asylum knows, that I won't ever be given the death penalty. Oh no, no. I'm much too interesting a subject to just, so you say, do away with.” The Joker paused, his tongue dashing out onto his lower lip. “Now try again, good Doctor.”

“What about better treatment? Since you're here and not at Blackgate, that means you were deemed criminally insane,” The Joker’s right eye twitched as she said this. “And deemed too emotionally and mentally unstable to serve jail time for your crimes. Despite committing capital murder, which is life in prison without parole, you're here, at Arkham Asylum, twiddling your thumbs, would you say?”

Harleen wanted to swallow her words once they were spoken, grab them as if they were physical entities and shove them back down her throat. She knew this man had a quick temper, could turn on a dime, so why didn't she speak more carefully?

She heard the Joker tsk, a soft little scoff from the back of his throat. Either he thought Harleen was some sort of uncertified, ignorant whack job, or he was planning her death.

She felt like she could hear the second hand on her watch tick by three agonizingly slow minutes before she opened her mouth again.

“Do you not want to get better?” She asked.

“I've got a better question for you. Why treat a patient who isn't ill?”

“Are you saying that you don't believe you have any mental illness at all? Nothing barring you from having the same mindset and capabilities as a normal functioning human?”

“I'm saying, Doctor Quinzel, that why should I be medicated and restricted for believing in and expressing my own set of opinions?”

Harleen was writing as fast as she could, her scribbles almost ineligible to anyone's eye but her own; whenever she felt onto something, she wrote in an almost crazed chicken scratch, a habit she developed early in college.

“So, what is your opinion then?” She asked one she had collected her thoughts.

“That would ruin the punchline of the joke if I told you, now wouldn't it? You're a _smart_ young lady, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out.”

And maybe she actually could. How many other psychologists here had gotten this much from the Joker, in just one sitting? Especially their first!

The sound of the door unlocking echoed through Harleen’s frantic scribbling. Her head shot up, swiveling to face the same two guards from earlier.

“Surely it hasn't been an hour already, has it?” She asked. The two guards secured the Joker into a wheelchair, legs bound again, but now there was a thick leather strap around his forehead to keep him from leaning forward.

“See you next week Doctor, it was _wonderful_ to meet you.” The Joker smiled, a big grin showing off his signature metallic smile. She waited for a laugh to follow, but it never did. Harleen stood, smoothing out her skirt before following the guards out the door, one of which was holding the door open for her.

“Thank you.” She said quietly, to which she received a firm nod. She watched the guards’ retreating figures, pushing the Joker back to the dormitory wing of the hospital.

Harleen exhaled audibly through her nose before turning in the opposite direction and walking back to her office. She had to type up these notes then shred the paper copy. And something told her that she had her work cut out for her.


	2. II

Harleen had her head currently resting in her hands, which had previously been folded in front of her. She could hear the tapping of the Joker’s right foot; she knew it was his right foot because it always was. He only ever tapped his right foot or his right fingers. Those tattoos heavily contrasted against the lighting of the asylum. Harleen exhaled, a soft breath through the barely visible slit between her lips. She ran her tongue across the front of her teeth and she saw the Joker do the same.

“Don't you have anything to say other than that?” She asked, leaning her head against her left hand, which had curled into a loose fist. “All you have discussed these last three weeks have been The Batman. I'm treating you, The Joker, not Batman; you know that, right?”

“Well of course I know that Harleen,” the Joker replied. He had stopped calling her Doctor Quinzel really fast.

“Do you really? Because sometimes I wonder if you see the Batman as a reflection of yourself.” She tapped her pen to her bottom lip a couple times, thinking. “In fact, I think you do. You're obsessed with a former part of yourself, you can't let it go. Batman won't kill you, you won't kill Batman. So it represents the never ending battle you've spent, probably years, battling against yourself. But instead of beating _yourself_ up, you projected this, this former you, onto the Batman.”

Harleen wanted to write all that down. She normally made sure to have her ideas written down before vocally sharing them because the Joker could so quickly change the topic and Harleen would forget her original idea. Harleen looked at the Joker, the sun shining through the plastic windows harshly, the bars shading the contours of the Joker’s face.

“I bet you're really proud of yourself.” He replied. Then it was quiet, except for the second hand ticking on Harleen’s watch. A minute sound, but almost blaring in her ears. “In fact,” he chided. “I know you are. Do you think you hit the nail on the head? Have something to publish a grand scholarly article about? Well, try again, dear Harleen.”

“Am I truly wrong, though? Honestly Joker, why are you obsessed with Batman if he doesn't represent something for you?”

“Hope.”

“Excuse me?” Harleen said, a tad flabbergasted.

“Hope, Harleen. The Bat represents Gotham’s hope. With hope comes disappointment, so if hope is pushed away completely,”

“There would be no disappointment.” Harley finished. The Joker had a crude smile on his face, not seemingly irritated that she had cut him off.

“And if there's no disappointment, then there's more room for smiles and laughter, more room for jokes. Imagine how many punchlines are forgone, how many hysterical moments are lost, all because of _disappointment_. When you spend so much time sad, wallowing in your self misery, you miss out on the jokes of life, on the joke of existence.”

The Joker leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs so that one ankle rested atop his knee. Harleen was busy writing down in shorthand, scribing furiously. She wasn't completely sure that he wasn't just trying to lead her astray, but better safe than sorry.

“So you see yourself as the destroyer of disappointment, the harbinger of humor.”

“Nice alliteration. Alas, like you said earlier, if I am to never beat The Bat, then I will never truly bring humor to the good city of Gotham.”

“Yet you try so hard to do so. You almost get yourself killed when you run in with Batman. Not to mention all the people you _have_ killed. It's hard to take a joke when you're dead. So what about those who miss out on your humor? Don't you want a bigger audience?”

“They were means to an end, to help get the punchline going.”

“And what is the punchline, Joker?”

“We haven't gotten to that part of the joke yet, my dear.” The Joker smiled when his wheelchair was rolled in and his was whisked away from Harleen’s scrutiny and questions for another weekend. Sure, they had spent yet another session talking about Batman, but this one had actually been progressive. Or at least, that's what Harleen thought. The Joker could have completely led her down the wrong path, which wouldn't surprise her one bit; she had this inkling in the back of her head though.

Hope.

Hope that maybe the Joker had actually divulged some jargon of truth in their session.

 

♢♢♢

 

Before she knew it, her business day was over. She waved to security as she walked past the front desk, fishing for her keys inside her cluttered purse. The old red thing had seen many days and Harleen was just waiting for the leather straps to give out on her. She got behind the wheel of her car, locked her doors out of habit, and pulled her hair down from its ponytail before starting the ignition.

_Always lock your car as soon as you get in it, baby girl. Gotham is a dangerous place, you never know what could happen! Beautiful young women get snatched from their cars every day!_

“Yeah, yeah mom, whatever you say.” Harleen muttered to herself before backing out of her parking spot, some top 40s song playing on the radio. Her mother couldn't have cared less whether or not she locked her damn doors. If cars didn't lock automatically after reaching a certain speed, Harleen was certain that she would have tumbled onto the speeding road many times in her childhood. Looked like car manufacturers got tired of hearing parents complaining about their children playing with the doors in the back seats, undoing their seat belts and launching themselves head first at the pavement. What parent wouldn't be cognizant of their surroundings enough to notice their kid was about to kill themselves just five feet behind them?

During the drive back to her apartment, one of Harleen’s friends called her twice, leaving voicemails both times. She listened to both as she entered her apartment, locking the door behind her, and kicking off a pair of well-worn navy blue heels. She untucked her blouse, which of course matched her heels, from her dress slacks. Going to the kitchen, she opened a can of domestic beer, sipping on the froth while her friend begged her to join them tonight.

Harleen had met Karalyn, who goes typically by Kara, back when she was a civilian therapist. It goes without saying that civilian therapy definitely wasn't Harleen’s cup of tea. She acknowledged that everyone needed help, but she couldn't stand hearing another middle aged wife talk about how her husband loves beer more than her, or how a teenaged daughter can't stand that her mom thinks it's just a phase. All that mindless droning was enough to drive Harleen mad herself. She surprised herself every week back then by not committing herself to Arkham.

She didn’t share much physically with Kara, a tall natural brunette, though you'd never guess with her dyed jet black hair, with dark brown eyes. She was bustier and had more of an hourglass figure where Harleen was athletically thin and less endowed, thanks to her years of competitive gymnastics. Which, in retrospect, was the only thing that kept Harleen sane before she got accepted into college.

Harleen didn't have the best youth, living in a very disorganized household: her parents had communication issues not only with their children but with themselves, not enough money to provide a good life but too lazy to work harder or look for better paying jobs, and too careless about their actions. Harleen had two younger siblings, a brother and a sister; she hadn't heard from them since she moved into college freshman year. That had been longer ago than Harleen liked to admit. She could only wonder if they were even still alive. Yeah, Harleen figured she should feel something better towards her family, but after all they did for her, which was nothing, she felt no obligation. They may share the same blood, have similar DNA, but in Harleen’s line of work and with her past experience, she knew that could mean absolutely nothing.

While she was sinking into her old leather couch, content to comfortably sip her beer, Kara called again. Harleen knew she couldn’t ignore her friend this time or else she would actually start to worry.

“There you are! I was starting to worry,” Kara said in lieu of hello. Harleen indulged herself in a light eye roll with a small sip of beer.

“I was driving when you called earlier, you know my schedule.”

“Driving and talking isn’t that bad Harleen, even cops do it.”

“Yeah, and even cops die in car accidents caused by cell phones. I would rather keep my life, thank you very much.”

“Fine, little Miss Do Good. Did you listen to my voicemails? Of course you did, you hate having notifications. What do you say? We haven’t gone out together in months, you’ve been so busy with work. I mean, not like I’m not busy, but I have more friends than you. Don’t pout, we know it’s true! You barely keep in touch with anyone but me and who knows if you’ll actually meet anyone decent at Arkham. It’s a mental asylum, Harleen.” Kara didn’t even stop to breathe.

“Kara,” Harleen sighed.

“Don’t start on me, Harleen! You have been single for a year now, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But Brandon has been in three relationships since you two called it off and it’s about time you get back into the game too.”

“If Brandon has been in three relationships this past year, then he’s surely not having any better luck than I am. We didn’t “call it off” Kara, I left him because he didn’t support me working at Arkham.” Harleen felt residual anger from all those arguments coming back.

Brandon and Harleen had been dating for almost a year and a half, Harleen’s longest relationship to date, when she got accepted to work at Arkham. She had been in plenty of relationships, but only a handful ever got past the one year mark. Everyone loved her and Brandon together, they looked aesthetically pleasing (to quote Kara, who had introduced him), they had enough in common, and they were both career driven. Brandon was a friend of Kara’s twin brother Kyle, who worked in New York City as some sort of CEO position for some major bank chain headquarter. He and Brandon had been friends since college, having been in the same fraternity at Boston University. They both traveled south to New York City, with Kara in tow a couple months later, though she ended up in Gotham “in search of new thrills and adventures.” Apparently, the Big Apple was too drab for her.

Brandon was a lawyer, working under one of the head honcho DA’s that Harleen never really bothered to remember the name of, despite meeting him a handful of times. He wanted to become DA, perhaps become a big time lawyer for important cases, and supported Harleen’s drive to become the best psychiatrist she could be. There had been talk of Harleen going back to school, maybe get her Masters just for fun, but Harleen couldn’t stop working long enough to pursue that reasonably; she loved what she did. Absolutely any chance of going back to school went out the window when Harleen heard back from Arkham. And so did any chance of a future with Brandon.

He didn’t support this new position at all, didn’t want Harleen associating herself with the likes of the criminals and heathens within the asylum’s walls. He knew Harleen wasn’t stupid, but he didn’t think she could handle the position, handle the clientele. It’s not easy living in a city like Gotham, Harleen had told him so whenever he came to visit; he noticed how she let her shoulders droop and lower her shackles whenever she was visiting him instead. He was so enamored with her, and she with him, that he didn’t mind the downgrading from his penthouse condo to Harleen’s uptown apartment until the arguments started. Then he would bring up how he gave everything up for her and how she couldn’t at least compromise a little in return. It goes without saying that the couple had a very rough break up.

“Hello? Earth to Harleen?” Kara yelled, making it obvious this wasn’t the first time she had been trying to get the blonde’s attention.

“Sorry, what?” Harleen shook herself out of her reveries, moving her beer onto the coffee table in front of her, placing the can amongst a series of prehistoric water stains.

“Wow Harls, you are _so_ gone. You have no choice, you’re coming out tonight. Now get yourself ready, I’ll be at yours in an hour.” Kara said, and before Harleen could get a word in edgewise, Kara had hung up.

Harleen sighed. Calling Kara back would only waste her time; she would just ignore her calls so that Harleen couldn’t debate their evening plans. Harleen stood with a roll of her shoulders, cracking her neck, and made the short trek from the main room to her bedroom. She vetoed a shower, choosing instead to spray some peach body spray on later. Inspecting her closet, she wanted something that flattered her without making it seem like she wanted to put out. It had been a year since Harleen had been sexually intimate with anyone other than her trusted vibrator and she had no problem with that. She laid her chosen dress on the bed before turning on her curling iron; it didn’t hurt to spruce herself up a little bit. She always had fun when she was out with Kara, despite her trying relentlessly to find Harleen a new partner.

As the curling iron heated up, Harleen stripped out of her work clothes, unclasping her black bra as she went. She shook her hair out over her shoulders, fluffing it just a tad, before getting herself dressed. She had chosen a backless periwinkle colored dress that flared out around mid-thigh. She had loved the dress at first sight because of how it made her eyes look. She also had no hesitation about it being backless since she had a smaller chest. Having forty minutes left, Harleen went into the bathroom to put some light curls in her hair, make it a bit more bouncy after being pulled up tightly all day. Once that was done, she put in a pair of contacts before touching up her eyeliner. Her mascara had held fine throughout the day and her lipstick just needed a small touch-up. Harleen put on a pair of comfortable flats, because no way was she spending the whole night in heels after being on her feet all day, and grabbed a small metallic silver clutch. As she walked out of her room, she heard a car horn outside. Grabbing her apartment keys and a granola bar, because you should never drink on an empty stomach, Harleen locked her apartment behind her and joined Kara, who had the car running in front of the complex.

As Harleen slid into the passenger seat, she offered her friend a bite of the granola bar.

  
“Oh no sweetie, but thank you. If I plan on getting as fucked up as I do, I would prefer it be on an empty stomach.” Kara declared with a wink, before shifting the car into drive and heading towards downtown. Specifically, they were headed to a strip of Gotham that was known for it’s heavy bar and nightclub scene. Harleen nibbled on her granola bar the whole way there, discarding the wrapper in her purse; it would be rude to litter in Kara’s car. Kara parallel parked a few blocks away from their destination, though it wasn’t a big deal because it was a nice enough night out and neither girl minded walking. Plus, the venues cord off parking in front of them. Harleen pocketed the keys in her clutch as Kara took her hand and started marching towards their first bar of the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, this was a very backstory/monologue heavy chapter at times, I'm sorry! I just wanted to flesh out my Harleen's backstory a little bit. Harleen's childhood closer relates to the New 52's version, though Harley's "creation story" will probably end up being a conglomeration of everything smushed together (artfully).
> 
> Sorry for the wait y'all, college started back up and I had to get into the flow of classes again (and switching my major. do I suggest switching your major junior year? eh, probably not)
> 
> PS - Link to Harleen's dress. I love visuals, I love details. (I'm sorry this was such a detail heavy chapter)
> 
> https://www.lulus.com/products/soft-strumming-periwinkle-blue-a-line-dress/312772.html
> 
> PPS - I'm bitter about how short these chapters are. What is 5 pages when typing looks so short when transferred over. grr.


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some spiciness in this chapter y'all! 
> 
> you will notice that I added Harleen Quinzel/Original Male Character into the relationship tags. Harley/Joker are endgame, but we have to get there first! This chapter works in many different ways for what I have coming up, so bear with me here! 
> 
> also, another kind of description heavy chapter? If you read any of my other works on here (they're Sterek, however), you'll notice that having a lot of monologue and detail is part of my writing style.
> 
> This chapter is slightly shorter than the other two because I started this one right after posting chapter 2; I really wanted to get this chapter typed before I lost the inspiration I had. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Harleen and Kara, along with some other women Kara had recognized at the first club, were onto their third bar of the night and it was almost painfully obvious on some of their behalfs. She held her liquor to a good amount, knew her limits and how to space herself between drinks. Harleen didn’t feel like she was babysitting, though, due to the lovely buzz humming through her body. Kara had been exaggerating when she said that they hadn’t been out together in months, but it had been awhile since Harleen had been out like this: smile wide on her face, swaying her hips to the beat of every song, and feeling pleasantly buzzed, not sober but aware enough of her surroundings. And she was now aware of the amount of testosterone surrounding her.

He was tall enough, had short dark hair, lighter eyes, and a creamy mocha skin tone, though that could have just been due to the lighting in the bar. He had wide shoulders, broadly defined, and muscled arms. His wide shoulders meant a broad chest, which didn’t do anything for the already too small size of his shirt. Harleen had to refrain herself from rolling her eyes out of her head. She knew the exact way his voice was going to sound, inclinations and all, before he even opened his mouth.

“Couldn’t help myself from coming over you,” he began.

A little deeper than she expected, but the format was basically on point.

“I’m sure you could have.” Harleen interrupted before taking a sip of the malibu bay breeze that she had been nursing for the past half hour. Something sweet for her to savor. She couldn’t ignore the overpowering scent of rum and cologne wafting off her discussion partner.

“Perhaps, but you looked too lonely all by yourself.” He leaned against the bar, tightening the way his shirt hugged his torso, if that was even possible.

“Hmm,” Harleen put her drink on the bar and began to turn to walk away when she felt a hand grab onto her upper arm.

“Hey, don’t go, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, please let me start over.” He raised his hands, palms facing forward when she pointedly looked at the grip he had on her. He sighed softly as Harleen retook her place and took back to her drink. “My name is Matt, you?”

“Harleen,” She said, sticking her hand out. He shook her hand with slight hesitation.

“Firm grip you’ve got there, Harleen, but soft hands.” He shared a small smile. “I bet you’ve  never had to throw a punch in your life.”

“A physical one, yeah, but metaphorical?” Harleen let that sit in the air, taking a long sip of her drink with a raised eyebrow.

“Let me guess, traumatic childhood?”

“Not to the degree you’re thinking,” Harleen talked around the rim of her glass. “But let’s just say the circumstances weren’t ideal.”

“Are they ever?” He chuckled as the bartender handed him a new drink. It didn’t look like anything with rum, but she couldn’t be sure; she really couldn’t smell anything other than the man standing across from her. “So how long have you been in Gotham?”

“Coming on about five years now. Came here after for my residency after college. I was born and raised a bit closer to Metropolis.”

“Ever run into Superman himself?”

“Oh please,” Harleen snorted. “I prayed every day not to run into Mr. Boy Wonder. Besides, I didn’t live _in_ Metropolis, just near. And I was out of there anyway by the time he came to light.”

“Ah, so you’re on the side of Gotham’s very own, to phrase it like you, Mr. Dark Knight,” He snickered with a look in his eyes that Harleen couldn’t place.

“I would absolutely adore a nice change of topic,” Harleen bit out the sentence as if she had just eaten something bitter. Just one night, one night out is not too much to ask. She just wanted one night out without having to think about that stupid Batman. “Sorry, he just seems to be all I’m hearing about lately.”

“I know what you mean,” Matt took a sip of his drink before putting it down on the bar. “Come dance with me, Harleen.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harleen trailed off, looking around for any sign of Kara or one of the girls they had met up with hours ago. They had all run off onto the dance floor as soon as they walked into this bar forty-five minutes ago. Besides, she wasn’t that fond of Matt’s conversation skills.

“I saw you dancing when you came in, so I know you’ve got moves. Come on, just a few songs. I know your friends are still out there.” Harleen looked back towards the dance floor when he said that, but she still couldn’t see them anyway. She sighed as she turned back to Matt.

“I guess a few songs couldn’t hurt,” She gave him a small smile.

“Well don’t make it sound like I’m pulling your teeth,” He winked before lightly taking her hand and leading her past the edge of the dance floor.

They quickly found themselves swarmed by sweaty bodies and a strong stench of hard liquor lingering around her shoulders. It took Matt a second to get into the beat of the current song that was playing, but once he got the rhythm, he was good to go, whipping out typical club moves. Now in different lighting, she could see that his skin was darker than she had originally thought, but it was smooth and even all over, as if molten chocolate had been poured over him. He had a wide smile, obviously the perfect orthodontist advertisement. Harleen wasn’t sure whether it was the alcohol in her system or something else, but she felt something carnal. She thought that it was more likely than not the alcohol because this was neither the first nor the smoothest guy to hit on her tonight and she hadn’t reacted to any of them in this way. She had been more sober earlier in the night; maybe she drank more of that malibu than she had originally thought. But she welcomed it, the warm buzzing feeling throughout her body, the desire to be closer to another person, who wanted to be near her tonight as well.

Harleen lost track of how many songs she and Matt shared on that dance floor, smiles coming and going on their faces, sweaty bodies plastered together, feeling every beat as a pulse shooting through their bodies. She had seen Kara’s dress earlier, saw her holding the hand of someone; it looked like one of the girl’s they had arrived with, but Harleen wasn’t sure. They were all grown women and knew how to responsibly take care of themselves. She refocused her attention on Matt when she felt his warm hands on her hips, feeling no desire to move them. Why should she turn away his advances? He might not be a keeper, they had just met after all, and he most likely just wanted to have some fun for the night, but why not indulge him? Harleen had absolutely nothing tying her down, so why not live a little?

She arched her back against Matt’s chest, feeling his warm breath ghost along her neck. It wasn’t soon after that she felt his lips slide against her skin, leaving tantalizing yet teasing kisses, soft but intentful. Each spot where his lips connected with her skin tingled like how vodka tasted when it slipped down her throat. She felt the buzz electrifying her skin, blush creeping up her neck, though not visible because of the lighting of the club.

Did she want to go home with Matt? Well, she wouldn’t take him to her place, that wasn’t smart at all. Harleen never, in the history of ever, brought anyone she wasn’t dating to wherever she was living. She didn’t know where Matt lived, but she assumed it couldn’t have been that far. She could always take a taxi or Uber home in the morning. She knew that she was taking one tonight, because no way was anyone going to be driving Kara’s car, but she hadn’t yet decided if she was going to be alone on the ride or not. She also knew that she was going to be feeling this in the morning, but she didn’t mind that too much, it had been a while since she had a good hangover; they never really affected her much anyway. Harleen refocused on Matt’s lips sucking on her neck, which felt pretty good if she did say so herself. She forgot what it was like to have attention from someone else, albeit just sexual, but she didn’t mind that at all. Matt’s hands felt warm, tight on her waist now, her dress hiked up. She wasn’t incredibly short, but the cleft of her ass sat on top of his strong thighs; turns out Matt was sculpted all over. She wondered how she didn’t notice earlier that she could feel his abs along her back through the thin material of his shirt.

Feeling frisky, she slid her hands away from their current resting place on his, and reached back to graze her fingers against his neck, feeling a cold chain resting there. He pulled her closer, which wasn’t necessarily possible, but she looped her arms farther and found herself wrapping them around the back of his neck. Matt was whispering in her ear, almost ineligible from the harshness of the music, but his voice sounded so deep, so intimate. Harleen turned, facing Matt now with her arms still wrapped around him, his hands squeezing her hips before traveling down to the top of her ass, almost in question, despite the sexual tension between the two of them. Harleen brought her body forward, feeling his hardness press against her, which was the permission for his hands to knead into her ass. She may be on the thinner side and be less endowed, but she was all muscle and her ass wasn’t exempt from that. Harleen had powerful legs, strong thighs, and a nicely sculpted ass that seemed to perch itself perfectly on top of her thighs. Brandon would never shut up about her ass, he loved grabbing it or giving it a playful slap in public when they were walking around. He had loved watching her ride him reverse cowgirl, which Harleen understood. She wasn’t too impressive from the front; her breasts, although the perfect handful she always said, didn’t have much bounce to their perkiness. She had a beautiful face, but damn, Harleen had seen a video Brandon had taken on his phone one day, and her ass was a sight to behold. The way it rippled with every bounce, the way it would tighten on the way up, looking like the most ripe peach or a full heart.

Harleen moved her body forward, her chest rolling up Matt’s sculpted body, and it was more than certain to herself that she would be comfortable going further with him. She would text Kara, if she couldn’t find her that is, to let her know her plans. Kara wouldn’t judge, especially since she had been known to “swim the sea” and “taste the rainbow,” as she would put it every now and then. She always let Harleen know how it went the day after, of course; Harleen and Kara had a close, nonjudgemental, and non-discriminatory understanding when it came to their sex lives. Harleen respected Kara’s frequency and tastes, just as Kara respected Harleen’s more reserved tendencies towards hook-ups; not saying they didn’t happen, but Harleen could count all the hook-ups in her life on two hands, while Kara could easily exceed both hands, both feet, and carry onto Harleen’s body as well.

She was about to suggest heading out to Matt when she felt someone latch onto her arm. She turned and saw one of the girls they had come with trying to get her attention. Harleen felt her starting to drag her away from Matt, so she latched her fingers in his shirt to drag him along with them. The girl, whose name Harleen didn’t know or couldn’t remember, brought the pair off the dance floor, away from the sweaty mob of bodies content on dancing all night.

“We were just about the head to the next place. Stephanie ran into her jerk ex-boyfriend Stefano, and don’t even get me started on him omg, he is the worst skeezebag that I have ever met and he doesn’t even have a big penis, so he definitely needs to bring his damned ego out of the clouds. And even worse, he has another girl here with him. Like they broke up barely a month ago and he’s already flaunting a new girl in public.” The girl rambled. Harleen was standing there, gaping like a fish at the fact that this grown woman had actually said “omg” out loud and in full seriousness. She kind of didn’t know how to react. Fortunately, Matt took initiative.

“Skeevy exes are the worse. I totally understand that you ladies need to change destinations. Though Stephanie, I believe you said her name was, should definitely stick her ground against him.” How could a man, whom Harleen was about to suggest having some hot sex with, whose hands were held tight to her ass just a few minutes ago, how could he be so composed? Harleen was flustered and completely out of it from their dance session and weren’t men supposed to be even worse? Didn’t all men think with their dick?

_The Joker doesn’t._

Harleen blinked at that thought. She didn’t know where it came from. She seldom thought of the Joker outside of work; she tried to keep business and pleasure - _especially pleasure_ \- separate. She didn’t even bring any files home from Arkham, not even when she started; she felt that it could have been too much of a risk. What if she had been mugged at some point, or got into a car accident, and the files got into the wrong hands? Talk about a breach in doctor/patient confidentiality. The only time recently that she had thought of Joker outside of Arkham was roughly a week ago when one of the nurses had called Harleen over the weekend discussing a possible side effect of a sedative that they had been using on other patients. The Joker was her only patient currently, as all physicians who saw the Joker focused on him and solely him due to his overwhelming nature. The nurse had called because they had yet to find a sedative that worked “nicely” and they were wondering if this one would be a good match to keep on standby for her patient. Nurses could read a patient’s medical charts, and the Joker’s was accessible, but throughout the wide expanse of doctors that this patient had seen over the years, a lot got contradicted, including possible allergies and noticed reactions. Harleen, as his current psychiatrist, did her best at the time to recall what she had determined, the notes she had added alongside the others, her slanted and scribbled cursive starkly different than the handwriting of the others present. She and the nurse ended up discussing it the following Monday anyway, so that they couldn’t blame anything on miscommunication.

“Harleen?”

Harleen shook her head when she heard her snap, snapping herself out of her memory. “Sorry?”

“I said is that alright with you?” The girl across from her had her eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Harleen had no clue what she was answering.

“Perfect, everyone is up at the bar.” The girl walked off, a cue for Harleen to follow. Instead, she turned to Matt.

“Since I know a spaced out look when I see one, you’re accompanying everyone else to Twisted Nerve as it’s barely midnight and no one wants to go home.” Matt smirked.

“Thanks,” Harleen softly smiled. Twisted Nerve was a club two blocks to the east and it didn’t have a very large male populace, so Harleen figured Stefano and his date weren’t going to end up there.

“Here,” Matt handed Harleen his phone. “My boys and I were gonna bounce soon anyway.”

Harleen sends herself a text from his phone, so that they would both have each other’s numbers. Handing it back, Matt slipped it in his back pocket. She gives him a small smile, not really sure of what to say. She sucked in a sharp breath as Matt brought her flush against him. It felt like he towered over her like this, it felt different than it did on the dance floor; it felt too precise, too thought through. He had an arm circled around her waist, circled meaning he completely had her body fitting into the crook of his arm. He brought his lips back to her neck, kissing it; she hadn’t noticed how full his lips felt earlier, too focused on the little bites he had been giving her at the time. He stepped away slowly, giving her a wink before he turned away. Harleen found herself frozen for a few seconds before she remembered she was supposed to be leaving. As she turned, she saw Kara watching her from the bar with a knowing smile spread across her face. Harleen sighed as she made her way towards the waiting group. Once she arrived, they all gathered their things and began walking to the next destination.

“Don’t think that you’re going to get out of telling me what that was all about,” Kara said, her arm linked through Harleen’s. She had a chiding tone in her voice, as if Harleen was going to try keeping this from her.

“There’s not much to tell, Kara. His name is Matt, I just met him tonight, and now he’s back with his boys.” She quoted.

“Babe, that was a damn fine piece of man, and you know I would never steer you wrong. Did you get his number? Please tell me you did otherwise we’re turning around.” Harleen couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Yes, I did get his number, not that it matters much.”

“All I can tell you is that he is definitely accompanying us when we go out next.”

“I can’t even tell you when that’s going to be,” Harleen sighed.

“Trust me, it’ll be soon. You definitely needed what you got tonight, I can tell. I felt like I was watching the makings of a porno, things were so hot between you too. God damn that boy has moves.” Kara sighed dramatically, fanning herself.

Harleen couldn’t help but agree. She also didn’t think she would mind seeing him again, she definitely had a fun time, without a doubt. Was there relationship potential? Probably not, she had realized that pretty early on in the night. But she hadn’t seen someone like Matt in Gotham in quite some time and she didn’t quite feel like letting him go just yet.


	4. IV

Harleen ended up going home about an hour and a half after getting to Twisted Nerve. Kara insisted that she accompanied her home, but it didn’t take much to get her reassured. Her ride back was short, quiet, and her driver even offered her a water bottle. Which she didn’t drink because Harleen was definitely not going to be another story about a girl being drugged by her driver. As expected, her hangover the next day wasn’t that bad, but she did guzzle down a glass and a half of water before bed.

Saturday and Sunday passed in a blur. Harleen used the time to tidy her apartment, do laundry, and run mundane errands around Gotham. It was almost boring to a fault. The mothers gossiping in the park as their children played, the businessmen spending their weekend away from family at a cigar bar, students from the local community college right outside the city clamoring in front of the hookah bar. She didn't live in a bad part of Gotham, away from crime, but every weekend was the same. The traffic was predictable, conversation seemed to be on a loop, and each face blurred into one another.

That's why she loved working at Arkham. Harleen had been there for close to a year now and she didn't regret a single minute of it. Yeah, it was difficult at times, especially during the first couple months when she wasn't sure if she made the right decision or not. Half of that was because she was still bitter about the rough split between her and Brandon. They woke up next to each other one morning and then he was on his way back to New York City before dinner. Along with missing him, Harleen spent the majority of her employment with low class criminals, fantasizing and daydreaming about the day she got a more severe case, something that would get the wheels turning in her mind. She didn't come across anyone like that before the Joker; he was actually her first high stakes patient. Sure, she'd seen some dangerous patients in Arkham before, but none of them had anything close to the Joker’s reputation. But she never regretted taking her position at Arkham; she considered it one of the best career moves she could have ever taken. If she ever decided to leave Arkham and work elsewhere, maybe outside of Gotham, she knew this would be an excellent résumé boost.

Harleen pulled down the visor of her car, checking her makeup. Matt had left quite a few marks on her neck and shoulders; she couldn't believe she actually had hickies. Harleen hadn’t had an actual hickey since her freshman year of college. Everyone realized that it was dumb as shit to leave a hickey anywhere visible. She learned a lot from her roommate and floor mates that year, all of them trying and finding the best waterproof, heavy coverage concealer that didn't make your neck look orange. A drug store brand turned out to be the best, despite shelling out some cash on better makeup products that just didn't work as well as the stupid $7 bottle from the back of the makeup section that was next to the pharmacy department.

Harleen had tried on a scarf earlier but it just looked ridiculous. She was hesitant to wear a turtleneck in fear of being too obvious because it wasn't that cold in Gotham yet; the city didn't start to freeze until around Thanksgiving. She couldn't believe that she, at 26 years old, was freaking out over having hickies still visible on her neck. She wasn't some naive teenager anymore who had to fear the judgement of other naïve teenagers. But she had to remain professional.

Digging through her closet, praying that she didn't have all her winter clothes packed away in the bins under her bed, Harleen had found a light gray cashmere turtleneck, the only of which she had seen that didn't look obscenely thick. She cuffed the sleeves when she put it on and it didn't look bad at all. She pulled on a pair of black slacks, slipped on some comfortable black flats, and deemed herself good enough.

Harleen finished touching up the concealer on her neck as she pulled herself out of her memory. She turned her neck, swiveling at different angles, making sure there wasn't any purple peeking out underneath the fabric of her top. She grabbed her metal thermos of coffee, slung her worn red leather purse over her right shoulder, and carried her lab coat in the crook of the same arm. She pressed the lock button on her keys until her car safely beeped twice. She smiled and gave the security guard at the front desk a small wave, getting one in return. Harleen walked up the sole stairwell in the building, going up to the second floor, which housed all the offices. She was pulling out her key card to swipe into the floor when the door buzzed and opened.

Dr. Joan Leland stood in front of her, hair twisted into a sleek bun. Out of all the doctors and nurses that worked at Arkham, female and male, nobody got along with her better than Joan Leland. Her office was next to Harleen’s and they had shared salads together on Harleen’s first day on the job. Joan was older, mid-forties at least, fine lines beginning to form around her eyes. She couldn't exactly call Joan her coworker, since she had worked at Arkham for over a decade now, but Joan never held that over her head. Even though she was the supervisor that Dr. Arkham never was, she never held that over anyone’s head. Joan was here every day, morning to night, sunrise to sunset. She arrived before the patients had breakfast and left after they had dinner. Harleen wasn't sure if she was married or not, since she had no wedding band, but there was the faintest of tanlines on her ring finger. Harleen found comfort in that she might not have been the only one to choose Arkham over a relationship.

“Good morning Harleen!” Joan chirped, nearly walking into Harleen. Joan had a clipboard in her hand, no doubt having just met with the charge nurse to go over how morning rounds had went.

“Good morning Dr. Leland, have a good weekend?”

“How many times, Harleen,” Joan smiled with a small eye roll. “Dr. Leland makes me sound like my father.” Harleen gave her a quick wink. “I wanted to talk with you actually, before you had your session today. I'll stop by your office after I debrief the group therapist.” Joan patted the clipboard in her hands.

“Sounds good, see you then.” Harleen smiled before the two parted ways. She used her key card to gain access into her office. The key card slightly resembled one that hotels give out to their guests, except the key card was white with a silver microchip and had Arkham Asylum printed on it in bold, matte black letters. Underneath, in smaller print, it said ‘Physician’s Access Card.’ Nurses, security, doctors and janitors all had different cards. No one except Dr. Arkham himself could access every single room in the building, or anyone who had his card for that matter. Even Joan’s card was limited, unable to open janitorial closets, the security room, and Dr. Arkham’s office. Harleen draped her lab coat across the back of her desk chair, setting her purse down on the carpet to her left. The doctors’ offices were the only carpeted rooms in the whole building.

Harleen set her cell phone on the right side of her desk, making sure the sound was off since there was no reason anyone would need to contact her that way during the work day. If anyone needed her, she, along with every doctor, had a desk phone with a specific extension code, along with a small directory listing every extension used by the asylum. The phones had a voicemail option, so Harleen made sure her mailbox was empty and that she hadn't missed anything important over the weekend. A soft knock echoed through Harleen’s office.

“Come in!” She called, looking up at the door. She didn't think it could be Joan already, it normally took longer to brief the group therapist every Monday morning. Normally, the weekend group therapist would do that job, but that program had been dropped. There currently weren't any weekend therapy sessions, individual or group, occurring during the weekends. The last weekend group therapist, who also did individual weekend therapy for emergency sessions for the patients who couldn't wait to see their psych during the workweek, had left eight months ago. Harleen voiced the necessity to have the spot filled to Joan multiple times yet each time she answered the same, saying Dr. Arkham was doing interviews.

Dr. Leland entered, steaming ceramic mug in her hand. She didn't drink coffee, preferring chamomile tea. Harleen wasn't sure that's the type she drank, only knowing it was tea; she didn't like tea at all, never cared for it.

“Have a good weekend Harleen?” Joan asked as she took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of Harleen’s desk. Each office had the same layout. The only differentiating characteristics were brought in by the doctors, which were seldom actually brought in. Harleen had just a few random knick knacks on her desk, some psychology books that she'd bought back in college filling the bookshelf across the room from her. There was a file cabinet built into the drawers on the right side of her desk, just like every desk in the offices, that held case files on the Joker and her past patients at Arkham. She left everything related to her time as a civilian therapist back at that office.

“Yeah, went out with some old coworkers this weekend. It was nice to get out, won't be having many mild weekends left.” Harleen couldn't care more or less about the weather.

“It's already starting to feel brisk, but I also blame my age.” She winked before wrapping her hands around her steaming drink. “How do you feel you are doing with the Joker? Do you believe you’re making progress?”

“I do, in some aspects. These past weeks have focused, almost extensively, on Batman.” Joan hummed at that, obviously not surprised. Batman is Joker’s mortal nemesis after all. “But I did get him to open up about that, though.”

“I know, that's what I wanted to discuss with you today.” Joan took a small sip of her tea. “I read your notes from your session on Friday, do you believe he's telling the truth?”

“Well, for certain? No, I don't; he's a pathological liar and has proven so time and time again. But if this was a lie Joan, it was very well thought out and constructed seamlessly.”

“I wouldn't doubt that. The Joker has a lot of alone time here, plenty of which can be used towards perfecting a lie to steer you off course. I don't mean to completely discredit your work Harleen, because if what he said actually was true, then this is incredible.”

Harleen wasn't actually sure if this was incredible. Joan must've seen the doubt on her face because she continued.

“Yes, incredible. No one has ever, _ever,_ gotten anything this groundbreaking from the Joker. It may not seem like much, but this is him explaining, letting us into his mind, inviting us to peek at his understanding. Now that we’re in Harleen, we must be careful to not get kicked out. We might not get another chance like this again. At least, perhaps not in the foreseeable future.”

Harleen nodded. She hadn't seen Friday’s revelations as monumental as Joan was putting them, but she was making a good point. None of the doctors had gotten to discuss hope in this sense. Sure, they asked about hope, but the patient had never explained so thoroughly what Batman represented to him, his true views on hope, his method.

Wait, his method?

No, Harleen didn't think she'd gotten to the method behind the madness. No, not yet. The Joker wouldn't give something that crucial to his persona that easy. Because, after all, Harleen believed that the Joker was a persona, that the man before the Joker must still exist somewhere, behind all the tattoos, makeup, and laughter. And murder, she couldn't forget murder. Maybe that's what she would discuss in her session with him today. The pair met three times a week at 1pm for an hour. Just like civilian therapy, except the setting and the circumstances were completely different.

“If you need anything, you know where to find me.” Joan said as she stood, lifting her mug almost in cheers. Harleen raised her thermos in return, sipping on the sweet coffee as her office door closed. She only ever drank coffee on Mondays, a habit she picked up from the teacher overseeing and proofing her college thesis. That teacher insisted that the caffeine from Monday carried her throughout the week, and though it was a silly notion, Harleen found herself picking it up anyway.

Turning on her desktop, which was provided by Arkham, she logged into the asylum’s database. This was only accessible from the desktop computers provided, negating the need to ever bring a laptop in; it also made the database more secure. She cracked her neck before entering her personal PIN number to access patient files, essentially wasting time before her appointment with the Joker. She propped her hand against her fists before starting to read updates on her former Arkham patients.

 

                                                                                                   ♢♢♢

 

At a quarter to one, Harleen put on her lab coat and headed towards the elevator. Again, she needed her key card to open the elevator doors. Security had been upped before Harleen had arrived at Arkham; apparently, hospital benefactors were unhappy with the hospital’s retention rate, which she understood seeing that said benefactors were the main source of income for the hospital. The typical patient here, who was criminally insane, tended not to have any type of insurance. Sure, there were mentally ill people at the hospital, who didn't commit felonies and had proper healthcare, but they were on the third floor and Harleen rarely saw them.

The elevator opened quietly, no ding or beep announcing its arrival. Harleen didn't walk as fast or as nervous as she did when she first started treating the Joker. The fourth floor consisted of only treatment rooms of different types, used for individual and group therapy. Group therapy was more commonly used for the third floor patients; the criminals in Arkham didn't receive group therapy, maybe once in a blue moon, due to violent tendencies towards one another due to beef they had outside.

Harleen arrived at the Joker’s treatment room before the orderlies did. She was used to seeing two men flanking the door before she got there, but not today. So she swiped in, sat down in her chair, and composed herself before they arrived. She looked over her shoulder, glancing at the blinking red light in the corner. It could visually record the session, but not audibly. When she first got assigned to the Joker, she watched the majority of his recorded sessions so that she could learn his body language, trying to read his grainy face. It wasn't until she heard the door open again that she realized.

Physician’s cards aren't supposed to be able to open the therapy rooms, assigned to the criminals, from the outside. The rooms on the left wing of the floor were only accessible by security. If a patient went bezerk or something, the physician could swipe out, but only security could let them back in. Janitors couldn't swipe in either, needing one of the late shift guards to accompany them over this wing of the floor. So how did Harleen swipe in?

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the sound of the Joker being secured to his chair. Harleen wanted to bring up the issue now, but it would be unprofessional to do so in front of her patient. She would just have to make note of it and visit the security office after the session.

“How are you doing today, Joker? Have a nice weekend?” Harleen asked as she crossed her ankles.

“As well as one can have locked up in this place.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Harleen nodded, pursing her lips slightly. “Is there anything particular you’d like to discuss today?”

“Now, why would you ask that?” Harleen brought the tip of her pen to her lip.

“So that I could see you look confused, as if I’m scheming something.” His lips slowly spread to reveal a small grin. “You look so beautiful when you’re confused.”

The Joker had said some weird things before, but calling Harleen beautiful came out of nowhere. She didn’t want to remain silent for too long because she didn’t want the Joker to think he got the best of her, if even for a moment.

“Do you often think about my beauty?” Harleen wanted to smack her forehead.

“I had no doubt that you knew of your own beauty,” He replied, leaning back. “But what of your potential?”

“My potential?” Harleen wasn’t certain that she liked where this conversation was going. Everything felt too focused on her. She couldn’t let him get the upper hand in this conversation, couldn’t let him manipulate her. She was more than just a pretty face, she knew that wholeheartedly, now she just had to prove it to the man sitting across from her. He would not get the best of her, not today.

“Oh, you know what potential is Harleen!” If he wasn’t in a straight jacket, Harleen imagined that he would be making grand gestures with his arms. “The capability to do greatness, or the lack thereof. The promise of something better to come,” He trailed off.

“The hope of something better, of something different, would you say?” Harleen really hoped this would bring his mind back towards the subject matter of hope.

“No, no I don’t think it would be hope, because hope is for something that might not have the opportunity to come true; there’s a chance it may, yet there’s a chance it may not. This is more along the lines of,” He paused. “This is more along the lines of what can actually happen, without a doubt, with determination and pressure.”

“But everything snaps at a certain pressure, does it not?”

“The key to this, dear Harleen, is finding the amount of pressure that comes right before the breaking point. To get so close, teasing at it, but denying it.” Harleen could almost see the innuendo in his eyes if she looked hard enough. She wrote her notes in shorthand almost, her slanted cursive words not forming full sentences but enough to remind her about the important parts of this conversation when she typed up her notes after this session.

“How did you uncover your potential, Joker?” He let out an almost thunderous laugh, the sound clapping off the four walls, bouncing between the bars on the plastic windows. He shook his head - not a question he was going to answer. “What about when?” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes - another no.

“Well, since it caused the tangent,” Harleen inhaled quietly. She hoped this wasn’t a mistake. “What about my potential seemed to intrigue you?”

“Intrigue _,_ oh yes Harleen, what an _appropriate_ word. To pique interest, to fascinate… to _arouse_ curiosity.” He moaned out the verb arouse. Harleen felt sweat gathering at the back of her knees and where her fingers gripped her pen. She briefly flashed back to the club with Matt, the heat she had felt then, she could practically feel his phantom finger-tips on her hips. She heard a whistle, which snapped her out of her reveries. She blinked rapidly twice. Harleen licked her suddenly dry lips. “You arouse _my_ curiosity.”

“Excuse me?” Harleen almost choked on her words.

“You arouse my curiosity.” He said each word slowly, deliberately. “You _intrigue_ me, oh yes you do Miss Harleen, I am _fascinated_ by your tenacity. No doctors have ever stayed with me as long as you have.”

“I don’t give up on any of my patients.” She replied.

“Now that’s definitely not this asylum’s motto, no, no. So how do you fit in here, then? Little Doctor Black Sheep.” His grin was predatory. Harleen tried not to stare at it. “It wasn’t the money, not at all. It wasn’t the intellectual stimulation of your peers without a doubt; these whackos don’t know sick from sane. They’re certainly not pleasant dinner partners.” Harleen wrote that down, recalling his disposition on his diagnosis as criminally insane. He didn’t seem to take kindly to that. “ _Stimulation…”_

Harleen imagined him scratching his chin, for some reason. She was hesitant to interject, fearful of losing the momentum of the conversation, despite her associated fear of where the topic was headed.

“Perhaps you needed greater _stimuli_ … And what greater than that of the criminally insane, don’t you think? Much more interesting than the plain folk of Gotham, which I have no doubt you know all about. No one, in their right mind at least,” He winked. “Walks straight into treating criminals.” He rolled his eyes with the word criminal. Maybe he truly didn’t associate himself as such, but surely he knew he wasn’t one of the good guys?

“Do you consider yourself good?” She asked. She needed to know, needed to understand, needed to see through his eyes. She felt it almost desperately so.

“Now where’s the fun in that? There’s not enough reaction being good, not enough provocation. There’s too much gray matter when you’re good.”

“Gray matter?”

“There’s nothing bouncing between the neurons when you’re good. Of course you know how the brain works, Harleen. When you’re good, there’s not enough going on, and your poor little synapses just work so slowly.”

Harleen hummed quietly, checking her notepad before making eye contact with her patient.

“You _provoke_ me.” He hummed, jumping back to something he was saying earlier. He was still leaning back, though his head faced forward now. “You are a _provoking_ woman, Doctor, I’m sure you must know that. In fact, you’ve almost mastered it in a _seductive_ manner.”

Had The Joker just called her seductive?

“Don’t turn those wheels too quick now, good Doctor. Don’t think too hard or you’ll prove that blondes really are just as dumb as they seem.”

“I’m not even a real blonde.” Harleen quipped without thought.

“Of course not,” The Joker snipped with a short chuckle. “Of course not, Harleen, though I couldn’t picture you as anything different. No, it wouldn’t suit your personality, natural inquisitiveness, the irony is enough to make me laugh... “ He trailed off, his head tilting, his eyes drifting away from Harleen’s slowly, unblinking. His grin shrunk minisculely, but it was noticeable to Harleen; she learned to pick up the smallest of changes in her patients over the years. “How easy it appears to get hands on you, little Doctor, _”_ He muttered, almost indistinguishably.

“What?” Harleen asked, her head tilting as well, leaning forward just a bit. The Joker surged forward, pulling hard at the cuffs around his ankles, the chains rattling metal against metal. She jumped back, alarmed at the sound.

“How did you really get here, Harleen?” He sneered. “How did a pretty little doe-eyed thing like you really land the spot to talk to me? Bat your eyelashes, did you? Sway your hips in a tight, short little skirt during your interview? Did you get a cramp under his desk, huh? Under all of the desks you sat under, sucking cock to get what you want?”

Harleen was shocked, her mouth gaping open like a fish.

“Oh, little wannabe innocent Harleen, you don’t have me fooled!” He howled with a laugh. “I see right through you! I see right through that concealer you have on your neck! I know you pay attention to detail, but you forgot that I do too, you worthless little child. Did you think you had me fooled? _Pathetic._ ” He spoke sharply. “Have I hit a nerve? Oh poor little slut, it’s a shame to hear the truth screamed right in your face, is it not? Ha! It brings a _smile_ to my face to see you look so offended; it’s gorgeous in the same way you love those markings on your neck. Oh I bet you wish they were sucked across every curve of your body! Does the thought of that make your little whore pussy wet? Oh I bet it does,” He started back up before Harleen could get a word in edgewise. She was utterly shocked how the conversation was turned, to say the least. He jolted forward, once, twice, pulling against the cuffs when Harleen stood. She had everything gathered in her hands, prepared to leave. She wasn’t going to sit around, wasting her time being insulted by someone just trying to get a rouse out of her.

“Shocked the little lady, I did! Turned her into a mute little harlequin for my entertainment! Oh how delightful your reactions are, how rich they taste on my tongue!” He howled as if this was the funniest joke he’d heard in some time. “You’ll be back little Doctor! You can’t stay away once your interest is piqued!”

Harleen walked out the door without looking back, the two orderlies on the side of the door bracing themselves suddenly, surprised by her early departure from the room.

“I’m done with him.” She stated coldly before turning to walk down the rest of the hallway.

“I’m in your head Harleen! And you’ll never get me out!” His laughter abruptly stopped when the elevator doors closed.

 

                                                                                                        ♢♢♢

 

Harleen wasn’t in her office for long, head buried in her hands, before Joan barged in, key card clenched in her hand.

“Now what on earth was that!” She demanded, door closing roughly behind her. The older woman was too gentle for swearing, it wasn’t her manner, but that didn’t mean she was weak with her patients. Harleen shrugged, her elbows rooted in place on her desk. She let out a heavy sigh before looking up at her visitor.

“There was nothing more I could have gotten from the session.” Harleen stated, short and simple. She found it best not to indulge what had been shared with her today. She would type her notes up until the mood of the room shifted.

“That doesn’t mean you just leave!” Joan huffed. “When has a doctor ever, in civilian therapy or not, just stormed out of a session not even half an hour in, under the premise that there was nothing left to be gained?” The woman was shouting but in the respectful yet no-nonsense tone of a mature woman.

“The session turned south, alright?” Harleen said bitterly. “I wasn’t going to stay there and intentionally let myself get dragged through the dirt.” She heard a soft sigh.

“The Joker has gotten at each and every one of us. At first, I thought it would only be a matter of time until he took a stab at you. Yet when you got through your first week without issues, then the next, and everything kept going smoothly, I just thought that maybe you were different. He had never been so, dare I say, cordial with any of the other physicians here.” She paused shortly. “What happened?”

Harleen shrugged, breathing out through her nose.

“Well, the Joker’s not usually a spontaneous man. He may seem so, but there’s always a plan behind whatever he says and does.”

Harleen internally disagreed. The atmosphere changed so quickly, the mood of the room dropped and it had felt like a chill had settled along her shoulders. Then it clicked, a hand cupping her neck. The Joker had referenced the concealer on her neck. There was no way any of the hickies could have been visible, she made sure of that before entering today. No one else she had seen today had mentioned anything either and she was sure someone would have if they had noticed. She pulled out her phone, turned on the front facing camera, and looked at her neck. She turned her neck, this way and that, inspecting herself. When she titled at one angle, however, she noticed a dark purple smudge on her collarbone, close to the place where her neck and shoulders meet. She hadn’t thought of covering anything that was covered underneath her sweater, figuring they’d already be hidden by the article of clothing. Though the hickey wasn’t technically on display, the discoloration was noticeable enough for someone as deductive as the Joker.

“Take an early day, Harleen. You’re free to go home after you type up your session notes.” Joan was quiet when she spoke and was quiet when she left, leaving Harleen’s door open a crack.

Harleen couldn’t believe what had happened. They had been having a somewhat progressive session, which she hadn’t really expected after hearing so much on their previous session. Normally, when he made a big point or discussed something important, he would then transition back to trivial matters for some time. So why had they actually had meaningful conversation today? And why would something like the inclination of a hickey cause the Joker to make a complete switch of character? Her pulse quickened with fear that she had now taken too many steps back with her patient and that he wouldn’t trust her anymore. But the Joker wasn’t capable of trust in the first place, that much was obvious, so what really was Harleen scared of losing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the longer wait for this chapter! Chapter 3 came quick, chapter 4 took forever; however this is my longest chapter to date! I've included visuals (if I can call it that) again because I love it & no one is gonna stop me. Thanks for being patient with this, though, it really means a lot! I'm transitioning from one department of my school to another and it's kinda hectic to say the least. Plus I'm still getting in the swing of being back at school c: anyway! I hope everyone had a nice weekend (a long one for us Americans!) & I hope to get chapter 5 out to you (fingers crossed) by the end of the week (this is tentative)
> 
> Harleen's top: http://shop.nordstrom.com/s/vince-side-zip-rib-knit-wool-cashmere-turtleneck/4328530?origin=category-personalizedsort&fashioncolor=H%20STEEL  
> Harleen's shoes: http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB125U1GXXXXXaLapXXq6xXFXXXK/2015-New-fashion-Pointed-toe-women-flats-ankle-strap-party-wedding-shoes-black-nude-flat-heel.jpg
> 
> Also! Feel free to share any questions/comments/concerns, I'm very open to constructive criticism, critique, and to resolve any issues y'all feel there are (like plot holes, too much description, etc; though I'm a very descriptive writer so that one will be hard to change)
> 
> PS - if you cannot tell, I love using parenthetical statements in my notes c:


	5. V

The Joker refused to see her for two weeks. The time for their scheduled session would come and he would cause a fit, beat a guard, get sedated, a recognizable pattern every other day. Harleen used the time trying to be productive, meeting with the head of Arkham security to settle why her card had been able to open the Joker’s therapy room. He sent one of the guards to walk around with her, seeing if it worked in any other rooms. When it didn’t, the duo went back to the security office, where her card was reprogramed, obviously, for further safety precautions. Harleen felt anxiety bubbling in the pit of her stomach, what if it wasn’t just her card that malfunctioned? What if it was the actual door to the therapy room that didn’t work? Was anyone else having anomalies with their key cards? If they were, she was sure Joan would have said something about it by now, urging staff to be more cautious and not let their cards falls into the wrong hands. All of that took roughly forty-five minutes and that barely wasted any time in her day. The Joker was her sole patient, so when she wasn’t seeing him, she didn’t really have anything to do. Sure, she could rewatch all the security footage of them in their sessions, read and reread her typed notes, analyze previous procedural methods used with her patient. But when they weren’t having sessions, there wasn’t much that Harleen could really do. 

Harleen came in every day of the week, even though there wasn’t much for her to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was always good to have an extra set of hands on staff. Harleen would join Joan doing rounds around the floor for the criminally insane patients, as well as sometimes being delegated tasks from Joan when she felt like she had too much on her plate. It was seldom, but when Joan did more work than Arkham himself, it was understandable that she would ask for a hand every now and then. Dr. Arkham, the current head of the asylum, was the fourth Dr. Arkham in the family, inheriting the hospital from his father, who had inherited from his father, and so forth. Harleen couldn’t really understand why anyone would want to keep an asylum in the family, but to each their own. Despite the name on the hospital, the Arkham family mainly acted as benefactors, figureheads, and came in a couple times a years to see how everything was going. It didn’t used to be that way, but apparently it had been operating in this fashion for the past few decades or so. Harleen wasn’t going to complain; apparently Dr. Andrew Arkham wasn’t the most pleasurable person to be around. Word floating around staff was that his second eldest son, Jonathan Arkham, was going to be taking over the asylum soon.

It was the day before Halloween and Harleen was sitting at her desk with her head in her hands. She hadn’t seen the Joker in two weeks and she was currently rereading all the reports that had been filed in that time. It was almost enough for Harleen to want to down a couple shots of whiskey. Their last session had been two Mondays ago. According to the report filed the next morning, Joker had apparently spent the whole night pacing his cell, laughing to himself sporadically. The nurses said that he didn’t sleep or eat at all for three nights. He would throw food at the nurses when they gave it to him, leer at the night shift security when they made their rounds, shouting unintelligibly while punching the walls of his room. The medical report from the first Wednesday reported two broken fingers in his right hand, both of which were tended to while he was sedated. He stayed sedated the remainder of that day and was tied down to his bed with thick leather straps. He rarely left that room, reporting that he spent the majority of the time once he was confined just staring at the ceiling, leering and giggling and biting at the air. There were half a dozen reports filed each week and Harleen didn’t know what to do. 

It wasn’t like she wasn’t trying to session with her patient. Their time to meet would come around and all hell would break loose. He would fight, bite, scratch at the guards, even when in a straight jacket. He headbutted one of the guards and gave him a concussion. He lunged at another and gave him a nice gash from a few of his teeth. Harleen knew his muscles must be stiff, laying down for the majority of the past week and a half. The staff quickly learned to be very cautious, sending in the male nurses to see him, the females steering clear, which did bug Harleen but that was more of a niggling presence in the back of her head. Whispers had been floating around the staff that Dr. Arkham was going to be called in, at least to meet with Joan, which she neither confirmed nor denied when Harleen brought it up with her. What could Arkham possibly do anyway? It’s not like they could just throw the Joker out of the asylum. 

Harleen’s mouth dropped open. They could just stop treating him in general, send him to Black Gate or some other offshore prison that existed but no one ever heard about. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unheard of. Criminals will plead insanity, plead anything, to get out of serving time. Harleen didn’t think the Joker was doing that though, surely he had some sort of mental instability or illness in there somewhere. There was a mess of different diagnoses and medicines tried on him in the past. Harleen didn’t have her patient on any medicines currently, wanting to see the Joker through the lens the rest of Gotham typically saw him through. She wanted to see him without the haze of chemical manipulation, see him as his truest self. That was a lie. Harleen knew that his truest self was out on the streets of Gotham, running game and leading his gang. She wasn’t sure if what the Joker actually did was gang related, but from what she heard and what she knew, he ran his operations in a mafia-like manner. He would get his hands dirty, he wasn’t afraid of that at all; he loved the spotlight being on himself, hence the textbook narcissist diagnoses two other doctors had given him. He always claimed his actions, never tried to push the blame onto someone else. That also showed that he didn’t regret a single thing he did. But plenty of healthy people don’t feel regret.

Harleen didn’t regret cutting ties with her family. Her parents weren’t in a position to raise just one kid, let alone three. She knew that she and her siblings were accidents, she had been told that multiple times during drunken arguments between her and her parents or between her mother and father. They would argue about whose fault it was: why couldn’t mom afford birth control, why didn’t dad pull out faster or buy better condoms, why did mom have to be such a slut. Her father accused on occasion, specifically on the Jager nights, that he wasn’t even sure that they were even his children; honestly, she wasn’t sure her mother knew either. Harleen and her sister had both taken after their mother in looks while her brother had weak resemblances to their paternal grandfather, though that wasn’t a strong argument because they only had one grainy photograph of him to go off of. 

Her parents were never physically abusive, just mentally exhausted. High school fuck-buddies that played with chance too many times. Her mom dropped out of high school once she was born and her father never got over getting kicked off the football team for knocking her up. They moved to a new apartment after each child before actually buying a small house when Harleen entered middle school. It wasn’t the nicest, a little rancher a couple blocks away from a trailer park, but it was home. Well, home enough. She shared a room with her siblings until she was sixteen and demanded that she needed her own room, at least away from her brother, because she was a teenager afterall. The house only had two bedrooms, since that’s what they could afford, so when Harleen says she got her own room, it was at her aunt’s house. It was her father’s sister, who had a strong dislike for sister-in-law, but she didn’t hold that against Harleen. She had a cousin, Caroline, that was half Harleen’s age and looked up to her like she hung the moon. The sleepovers with Caroline became more and more frequent, Harleen staying to help the little girl with her homework, piano practice, and gymnastics, which she started because she wanted to be just like Harleen. Her aunt eventually opened her guest room for Harleen to use as she pleased; however, the offer wasn’t extended to her siblings. Harleen tried hard in school, focused, never got detention except for that one time. Her brother smoked cigarettes at age fifteen, both of her younger siblings skipped class whenever they felt like it, and the duo were just passed through the public school system. Her aunt and uncle had a good upbringing, but her father turned his life downhill, jumping between odd jobs, never going to college, and her mother was hopeless without a doubt. So it made sense that, whenever Brandon’s family asked about hers, she said she was estranged and left it at that. Kara was the only one of her friends who knew where she came from, not that Harleen had wanted to share that anyway. Her friend picked it out from her mannerisms, being a fellow therapist and people reader. They shared their upbringings and hardcomings over a pint of cherry garcia ice cream and Harleen didn’t regret that at all. The only family members she slightly missed was her aunt and Caroline, but she made sure to send a gift every year when the child’s birthday came around. 

Harleen was brought out of her thoughts with a knock on her door. She stood to open it, smoothing out her dark orange knit dress as she stood. The weather had dipped earlier this year, a crisp wind steadily blowing through the city. Behind her door was Joan who walked right into the room with a determined look on her face. Joan didn’t have to knock, her card had access to every physician’s office, but she would do so out of respect. Which means she needed to get something across to Harleen. 

“Enough is enough.” She stated simply, walking around Harleen’s desk. Harleen would have felt like her privacy was being invaded, but the only items she currently had pulled up on her computer were the Joker’s recent incident reports. 

“I’m frustrated too Joan,” Harleen started but the older woman raised her hand.

“You’re sitting here, letting this happen. And you’re not giving any input into why he might be acting this way. You are the sole doctor currently seeing him Harleen, and you have no clue what’s going on? Come on, I’m smarter than that Harleen, give me some credit. So what aren’t you sharing?” Joan crossed her arms. 

“I’m not hiding anything Joan, honestly. I can’t even begin to claim that I understand the Joker. He has mood swings, which has been noted before, but isn’t typically symptomatic of bipolar or PTSD or depression or any anger disorder that I can think of. He’s volatile, maniacal, like a pipe bomb waiting to explode some days. But those are just some. What about the other days? We can’t ignore those.”

“We don’t ignore anything about the Joker,” Joan interrupted. 

“Except for the fact he doesn’t see himself ill at all.” Harleen paused. “You’ve read my notes on this, you know what I’ve heard him say about the institution of mental health as a whole, the implication that he is anything short of sane. He’s diabolical, he’s a mastermind, we know this, Gotham has seen that.”

“So are you saying he isn’t sick at all? Do you think he belongs here, Doctor Quinzel?”

And then she knew. She knew that what she had feared earlier was true. Dr. Arkham and Dr. Leland had discussed transferring the Joker to some maximum security prison. But he had broken out before, had caused countless prison riots; he never went to the same jail twice. 

“I’m not saying he isn’t sick, I just don’t have enough evidence to come to a diagnosis.” Harleen was careful with her phrasing. “At any other hospital or detention center, he wouldn’t be as closely watched. He wouldn’t have constant monitoring, one on one care and treatment,”

“Which hasn’t happened in two weeks now.”

“I’m aware, but the progress we have made has to mean something. We are learning about a criminal that no one has ever been able to crack before. We could learn how to prevent future crimes; that’s not something a parole officer could do. We could find a pattern, learn his method, and get GCPD a prediction model even, could you imagine that? Imagine understanding one of the most notorious criminal masterminds known to Gotham’s history! Hell, New Jersey’s history! There will never be another man like the Joker, which is why we need to keep him here at Arkham; we can’t let this slip out of our hands. This might be the last chance we get.”

A smile slowly formed on Joan’s face.

“And that’s why I put you as the primary physician for the Joker. You’re driven, persistent, you see him as a patient, not just the notorious bad guy. Yes, many doctors have had them as his patient before, but they exclude any semblance of humanity from his character because of his criminal background. You said he was a man; that is seldom ever used to describe the Joker. You dig deeper than the other doctors, you bring the, dare I say, soul back to the patient. Although it’s very debatable someone as cold-hearted and evil as the Joker could even possess anything that resembles a soul, you still acknowledge it. That’s what makes you so different and so crucial, Harleen.”

While speaking, Joan had walked towards Harleen, eyes wide and passionate about her words. Harleen understood, she was just as, if not more so, invested into the Joker’s treatment here at the asylum. He had been in and out, illegally, of these walls countless times and Joan had been here through all of them. Harleen wasn’t sure that he had remained in the institution for this long of a period before. Joan placed her hands on Harleen’s shoulders.

“Now it’s time to get back into the swing of things, don’t you think?” Joan gave Harleen’s shoulders a gentle squeeze before walking to the door. “You’ll be having your session today, I’ll make sure of it personally.”

Harleen didn’t want to know what she meant by personally, but she was content with not knowing. That woman was a force to be reckoned with.

 

♢♢♢

 

Joan called Harleen later in the day, using the asylum phone on her desk, to confirm that her appointment was officially scheduled for later today. She had left it vague, not using any names, although there wasn’t any reason to. Harleen couldn’t stop herself from wondering how the Joker had been convinced. Was he just done being fed up and angry? Was he threatened with something? Harleen didn’t put it past Joan to talk to him personally, face-to-face, because the woman had no aversion to the Joker. She’d had conversations with him in the past, but Joan was just generally too busy and was a very important asset to the everyday runnings of the hospital. The hospital couldn’t afford to lose the attention of someone like her, and she, frankly, didn’t have the time or desire to be focused so solely on one patient. Joan liked having multiple different things requiring her attention, she had explained so early on to Harleen when the latter had asked why she didn’t mind being so busy all the time. 

At fifteen minutes before the hour, Harleen sipped the last of her chilled coffee and slipped on her lab coat. She tightened her ponytail, futzed momentarily with her classes, and made sure her key card was in her coat pocket before leaving her office. She peeked her head into Joan’s office since the door was opened and gave her a brief thank you, to which the older woman simply replied with a courteous nod without redirected her gaze from her computer. 

Harleen felt somewhat odd returning her her route to the Joker’s treatment room. Her shoulders were tense, her palms felt clammy, as if she was meeting the Joker for the first time all over again. She had fucked up, wait, no she didn’t. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Harleen was a young woman, healthy and active and beautiful, she didn’t doubt any of that. So what if she went out and enjoyed herself? She was allowed to have a life outside of Arkham, it wasn’t like she had to devote herself to the Joker. He was her patient, she was his doctor, that was it. He had no reason to call her everything he did and try to hurt her. Okay, he did hurt. She cried at home that night, sobs wracking her body, her sounds of distress echoing in her little bedroom, pillow tight against her face. She had never felt so embarrassed in her life; she knew then that Joan would have access to that footage eventually, Dr. Arkham too if he desired. Security watched over the sessions in real time, though they didn’t have access to the audio recordings, though Harleen wasn’t entirely sure about that. She hadn’t seen many looks on the faces of her coworkers, and Joan was good at keeping her intents and feelings hidden, so Harleen didn’t know if anything had gotten out. Surely the orderlies that had been guarding their door heard, the Joker hadn’t been necessarily quiet while screaming obscenities at her.

When she got to the room, one of the guards at the door swiped her in. She sat down, taking the pen out of her lab coat pocket, fingertips unconsciously shaky. Harleen took a few audible, slow, steady breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying to settle her anxious heart. Her mouth went dry when she heard the door unlock again, heard the telltale sound of a wheelchair being pushed across the room. Harleen wasn’t prepared, however, for the image of the man in front of her.

First off, jarringly, the Joker had on a spit mask, a plastic one with edges that appeared to dig into his cheekbones. He had two pairs of cuffs attached to his ankles and a thick leather band reached around his forehead to keep his head held back to the chair. There were two other leather bands around his torso to keep him from lurching forward in any way. Because of his broken fingers, the Joker couldn’t wear a straight jacket, or else they could heal improperly, though Harleen doubted anyone would really care; she doubted if the Joker cared at all. He had one set of handcuffs at his wrists and another pair, slightly bigger in size, near the middle of his forearm. The knuckles of his right hand were scabbed over, slightly pink and near the end of their healing stage. His middle and index fingers were dark purple, seemingly black in spots, and surgically taped to a large stint, which she knew wouldn’t be metal because no way would they give the Joker something made out of metal that he could harm someone with. Harleen wasn’t actually sure what prosthetic the nurses on staff or medical doctors on call had used, she didn’t recall reading about it in the incident reports. His left hand was scraped, rough scratches along the back of his hand, which continued up his arm. Harleen always saw the Joker wearing teal asylum-issued scrubs, but she never saw his bare arms, due to always being in a straight jacket. He had a giant grin along his right forearm, which matched the one on his left hand in color and style. She saw scribbled “ha-ha’s” along his left forearm and the beginning of another tattoo disappearing under the sleeve. The collar of his shirt hinted at more tattoos on his chest; how inked was he? Harleen knew that he was heavily covered, but how so? She couldn’t deny the rising curiosity inside herself. 

The door shutting behind her brought her attention back to the present. The Joker had his eyes coldly staring at her. She hadn’t exactly expected a warm welcome from him towards the reinstatement of their sessions. Harleen couldn’t let this bother her anymore, she was a professional damn it, she had been in awkward situations before with her patients and come out just fine on the other end; the Joker was no different. 

Harleen knew that wasn’t true the instant she thought it.

“Nice earrings.” Joker said, voice muffled through his spit mask. Harleen knitted her eyebrows together before bringing both hands up to her ears; she couldn’t remember what she put in that morning. The reason she couldn’t remember, however, was that she hadn’t put anything in, her lobes were empty, which is how she styled her ears during the weekends. It was her routine to have her other piercings filled during the weekends and she had forgotten to change them out thanks to being so micro-focused on the Joker lately. She had gotten her first lobes when she was eleven, the one Christmas present from her parents that year, though it was done by a cheap gun in the mall. Harleen didn’t care, she felt so cool having her ears pierced. She hadn’t started collecting other piercings until she went to college, not that she was afraid of how her parents would react, they were modified themselves in many ways. Harleen had waited until she went to college because she wanted the piercings to symbolize her freedom, the ability to make her own choices. On her left ear, she had one cartilage piercing before the curve of the top of her ear, and a second one halfway down the length of her ear. She also had her tragus and snug pierced. On her right ear, she had her daith, rook, and the closed reminders of her former industrial. Harleen had a spider bite during her sophomore year of college, but she took that ring out five months after getting it done. Her most recent piercing, gotten three years ago with Kara, had been her navel, which was technically classified as a dangle, though it really was just the common piercing style for women’s belly buttons. Lately, Harleen had been considering getting her nipples pierced, but had put off since Brandon hadn’t liked them. He eventually just kept his mouth shut whenever Harleen had jewelry put in anything other than her lobes because it always started an argument; it was Harleen’s body, she could do whatever she wanted. Along with the various body piercings, as another act of deviance and being herself, unrestrained, Harleen had gotten a tattoo the first weekend of freshman year. It was quite faded now since she never really cared to get it touched up, but it was a little dolphin, since they were her favorite animal, with a small rainbow behind it, to signify the beauty that can come from a storm. She also started dying her hair from a light brown to blonde in her freshman year of college; she didn’t want many, if any, reminders of her family.

“Thank you,” Harleen replied, taking her hands down from where they touched her ears. She noticed that the Joker wasn’t his usual twitchy self, turned his head this way and that, a certain musicality to his voice absent. It was a beyond stupid question to ask, but she was obligated to do so as his doctor. “How do you feel?”

The Joker would have leaned his head back when he laughed if he could have. It was as if he had just heard the stupidest question ever, which Harleen had definitely seen coming. 

“How do I  _ feel _ ?” He paused for a short chuckle break. “Let me ask you, Dr. Quin _ zel _ , how does that make you  _ feel _ ?” He laughed again. 

“How does what, exactly, make me feel?”

“Being powerless.” The Joker hissed. 

“When having to be so unwillingly? Not very good, I’ve got to admit.”

“And what would you consider a  _ willing  _ instance of transference of power?”

“Consent, for starters. Understanding, desire, the want to submit.” 

“Sounds kinky, doc.” Harleen couldn’t disagree. 

“Why did you ask?”

“I wanted to know how the other half lives, is that so wrong? Is that too innocent for you?”

“So you’re always in control, always hold power?” Harleen wrote that down. 

“Always, always, always,” he said slowly. “It’s natural, you know, the evolution of species, for the existence of dominant and submissive beings, to have a hierarchal order. Survival of the fittest! And when you’re at the top, you have the power to decide who survives.”

“What about before you were the Joker?”

“Oh  _ honey _ , there is no before, only is.” 

“I don’t know, I honestly have a hard time believing that at all. What about when you were a child? You must have memories of that.”

“I have always existed, always waiting in the background, watching, stalking, waiting for the right opportunity to  _ pounce,”  _ Harleen heard his teeth chomp behind his mask. Harleen felt like a petite rabbit staring straight into the wolf’s mouth. She looked at the mouth tattoos on him with that thought. How many women had he eaten?

No, people! Men and women and children alike! But, she couldn’t help but wonder, how many women had fallen prey to him? Found themselves at the mercy, or lack thereof, of the Joker? The Joker obviously cared who Harleen was with, so it was only natural that she think of whom he had been with too, right? Right, this was justified, she had reasoning behind her. But, Harleen couldn’t cover the sinking feeling, she had never heard of any women coming out the other side alive. And that caused her heart to jump forward, almost as if sending herself headfirst into the wolf’s mouth. 

“You healed nicely, doctor,” the Joker said, pulling Harleen out of her thoughts once again. “What a shame it must be, no discoloration on that porcelain skin of yours. How many watercolor portraits have you created, I wonder?”

Harleen didn’t know how to answer, just slightly turned her head out of habit and crossed her ankles. 

“Shorter nails too, is someone anxious?”

She had been anxious, yes, the past two weeks. It was a bad habit, but when she was younger, Harleen would bite her nails incessantly, sometimes until they bled. She subconsciously picked the pattern back up in the last week, her nails painfully short in places. With attention brought on them, she curled her hands into light fists. 

“You don’t have anything to hide from  _ me,  _ dollface.”

“Oh yeah? Nothing at all?” Harleen was light on her sarcasm, even though there was nothing he could do to her in his current state. She still didn’t want to underestimate him though. 

“Oh yes, it’s silly of you to do so, when I know so much about you.” Harleen raised an eyebrow. “Harleen Francis Quinzel, daughter of two useless parents, older sibling of two copycat others. No stranger to the other side of a psychiatrist appointment. Gymnast enthusiast, nerd extraordinaire, slight astigmatism that causes your need for glasses. Natural brunette, 3.8 GPA in highschool, 3.7 in college, along with mild yet typical symptoms of antisocial personality disorder throughout college, where you so nicely sat on my side in this situation. Was it actually voluntary though? Or was that just part of your plea agreement with the police?”

Harleen’s mouth was hanging open, how could he possibly know all this information about her? He’d been locked inside for months, no contact with anyone except for hospital staff, and Harleen was sure he hadn’t know about her existence until his recent time at Arkham. 

“The charges were expunged.” Harleen justified, to which the Joker laughed heartily. 

“Oh of course they were! You couldn’t possibly have a career as a hard-working, crystal clear, do-good psychiatrist with a record! Nope, little Miss Harley is a girl scout! HA! No, her parents couldn’t afford such a  _ luxury _ , hence the slight shoplifting that you never got caught for, and the self-taught gymnastics after age thirteen, and the cigarettes you sold in high school and the joints in college.”

“Unbelievable.” Harleen breathed. She hadn’t thought about any of these aspects of her past in years, Harleen couldn’t even remember the last time any of this was brought up. Kara didn’t know these things because it was none of her damned business, it was all in the past, Harleen was over it all. 

“But don’t worry, cupcake! Your secrets are safe with me.” He winked. Harleen slightly believed that, knowing the audio of the camera in the corner would have a hard time making out anything the Joker had said through his spit mask. 

The door buzzed open but Harleen was too shellshocked to begin gathering any of her things. Her pen hung loosely in her right hand, mouth open, blinking slow. She shook her head minutely when she heard the Joker’s wheels creaking, tucking her pen back into her coat pocket, and closing her notepad.

“Enjoy your Halloween, Harleen! It truly is my  _ favorite _ night of the year! But do be careful now, the freaks come out at night.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY, IT'S HERE! I AM SO SORRY. Being honest, I sort of lost my mojo for this story, but tonight I watched Suicide Squad again, reread Murder Song by strangerthan and Would You Live for Me by EndoratheWitch updated and she's super sweet and I JUST GOT the sweetest comment from her because I was checking my email to make sure I was spelling author names right
> 
> anyway! chapter updates will be WAY more frequent than this last one. This was what, four weeks or so coming? I don't even want to think about it! What do you guys think Harleen should be for Halloween? (hint hint wink wink nudge nudge) 
> 
> Harleen's outfit this chapter: http://www.polyvore.com/harleen_ch5/set?id=208573522


	6. VI

Cliché Halloween songs, remixed with a heavier bass or air horns, typical to get the blood pumping. Fake blood smeared across bodies, colored contacts, ass cheeks and breasts peeking out of costumes. The older denizens of Gotham never let a good Halloween pass by. There would be dozens of people dressed up as Batman, both conservative and sexy, along with a dozen different depictions of various criminals throughout the city and surrounding area. A few Supermen here and there, a Catwoman or two, some sexy cheerleaders or scantily-clad animals, some realistic looking zombies popping out at random people from their hiding spots around the corner. Harleen was a pirate this year, comprised of a white petticoat with faux leather details, and a pair of knee high black leather boots that she’d been saving for the right occasion. She had on fake press-on nails, at Kara’s request, who had on a matching pair. Go all out, Harleen’s friend had said, who was dressed in a faux leather and latex bodysuit, vaguely resembling a police officer. Both women had their hair curled, falling down around their shoulders, bodies twisting and bumping against one another after sipping on Halloween themed cocktails, which of course Kara had found men to buy for them. They weren’t on the side of town where they normally partied, but Kara’s coworker told them about this place, and Harleen was Kara’s date for the evening, no matter where they went.

Even though Halloween fell on a Tuesday this year, that didn’t stop the crowds, from children trick-or-treating at dusk to the midnight ravers. Neither Harleen or Kara stayed out too late that night, parting ways after a couple drinks each, snacking on bite-size big-brand candies that were strewn throughout the bar. Both women held plastic bigs, provided by the kind bartender of the establishment, that held a variety of chocolate treats, lollipops, and most likely disgusting alcohol flavored treats. They hugged and lifted their bags in parting with promises of texts when they each arrived home.

 

♢♢♢

 

“Good morning Gotham, this is Summer Gleeson with GNN, updating you on last night’s macabre events. Multiple hotspots throughout downtown Gotham were targeted last night in what appears to be a true act of vandalism, defamation, and sheer chaos. Three people died in the explosion of popular bar and nightclub, Esquire; two others remain in the hospital, though they are both expected to make a full recovery. We have Vicki Vale live from the 800 Block of downtown, Vicki?”

Vicki Vale looked up from her hands when she was signaled that the television connection had properly come through. Vicki was wearing a tan pantsuit, her red hair coiffed against the slight breeze blowing through the city, with an olive green blouse composed underneath. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyebrows were neatly plucked. She had been a reporter for many years with GNN and she looked as young as the day she started; probably why the company kept her, in all honesty.

“Thank you Summer. Late last night, calls started coming to dispatch about suspicious characters roaming through downtown, seemingly malicious. I have with me one of the first responders, Officer John Blake. Officer Blake, can you tell me what you saw when you arrived?”

“Of course,” he paused. Officer Blake had dark hair, dark eyes, and a chiseled jaw with a boyish face. Slight bags were beginning to appear under his eyes and one of the news assistants was holding his cup of coffee. “I expected just some rowdy teenagers or college students to be honest, I didn’t expect to see the array of characters that I did. When I came on the scene, I saw the sidewalk littered with cans of spray paint and what looked like miniature candy bars from afar. There were multiple different portrayals of, what we assume to be, the devil, one of which included the Batman symbol, with horns perched on top of the bat’s head, blood dripping from the wing tips.” The camera panned over to the wall that contained what he described before focusing back on the conversating.  

“You assume these to be the devil because of the connotation of Halloween as a Pagan or Satanic ritualistic evening?” Vicki asked.

“That’s just an idea circulating right now. Along with that imagery, profanity was found sprayed along the walls and sidewalks for multiple blocks, and the removal process has already begun."

“What can you tell me about the type of people you saw?”

“Well, they easily blended in with the rest of the people out last night, but we received reports of a lot of people dressed in Superman hoodies and Batman masks, we received one witness who said he saw the trio from the Wizard of Oz skipping arm-in-arm, as well as a bunch of men dressed as bloodied princesses, crowns and tutus and pink frills. A witness says they carried what appeared to be spiky baseballs bats? We’re unsure about that at this time.”

“Were these people doing any harm?"

“We think they might have been a distraction, at this point, to get suspicion pointed towards them and not whoever was behind Esquire.”

“Different people were behind the attack at Esquire last night and the vandalism?”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Officer Blake started before a commotion erupted by the various news reporters that we on the scene; there were all Gotham news station reporters, along with representatives from Metropolis, New Carthage, and some neighboring towns. Vicki motioned to her cameraman to follow her with a brief excuse given to Officer Blake, to which he nodded and retrieved his coffee. Vicki found a swarm of reporters gathered around Commissioner Jim Gordon, who had just arrived on scene. His glasses reflected the morning light shining through the low fog that hung around the city. He seemed ready for the onslaught of reporters and cameras by his posture and he smoothed over his brown moustache before he spoke over the questions being shouted at him one after another.

“Yes, good morning everyone, I’ll try and answer as many questions as I can, but I really do have to get to work.” Commissioner Gordon politely said.

“Do you have any leads about the bombing at Esquire yet?” one male reporter shouted amongst the fray.

“Not yet, we’re not crossing anyone out, but everyone leaves their mark and we’ll find that, one way or another. Cost of the damages have yet to be determined, but the place of operation will be closed indefinitely until further notice.”

“Have you released the identities of the victims yet?” another reporter asked.

“The families have been contacted and the names of the deceased will be released later today.” Gordon answered with conviction and authority of the situation.

“What caused the explosion at Esquire?” Vicki jumped in, her microphone held out in her extended arm.

“The bomb squad went in earlier this morning and found the source of the explosion, which was located in a back room, appeared to once have been a janitorial closet of some sort. The bomb was supposedly in a custodian bucket and detonated by a triggerman; this was a planned, timed out event, whose reasoning we are still investigating. The bomb squad is sweeping other local places that were densely populated last night for any undetonated bombs or clues about the whereabouts and identity of the trigger man."

“Is it possible that any of the vandals were the triggerman?” another female reportera asked.

“It’s quite likely, which is why I have officers currently going over security footage from the areas surrounding Esquire for outfit or facial recognition. I have to be going now, no more questions.” Gordon said before walking off, some reporters following with other questions. Vicki turned towards her cameraman.

“And that’s all we have from Commissioner James Gordon, who was not expected to arrive at the scene, from word of mouth. We will continue to be on standby on scene to be the first to share any groundbreaking news about who was behind the attack last night. Back to you at the studio, Summer.” Vicki signed off with a small smile.

“Reports started coming in late last night about disturbances in the 800 block of downtown, and were originally written off as Halloween pranks, says one source. The emergency responder system is being looked into and the parties responsible, for not reporting the calls to dispatch sooner, are being dealt with.” Summer unnecessarily shuffled the papers that were sitting in front of her that contained points for each story to touch upon. “The events of last night seem to have no connection to the five bodies that were found posed outside of Noonan’s bar late last week. That investigation continues as police narrow down any possible leads. If you know anything about either events, please contact GCPD immediately.”

 

♢♢♢

 

Harleen walked briskly with her notepad clutched to her chest. Her patient was already waiting for her when she arrived for their session.

“How lovely to see you, Dr. Quinzel, did you get anything good trick-or-treating?” The Joker grinned, a slight shake in his shoulders from a quiet chuckle.

“Have you heard about the events of last night?” Harleen asked, knowing how fast word spreads between guards, staff, and patients.

“Oh yes I did, was stimulating breakfast conversation I hear, though I wouldn’t know for myself seeing as I’m not allowed to eat with the general population.”

“Don’t attack other patients and maybe you’ll be able to gain that privilege back.” Harleen remembered all the broken bones, bite marks, and other injuries that the Joker had caused throughout his stay at the asylum. “What did you hear?”

“That the police know just about as much as we everyone else, which is virtually nothing.”

“You’re a smart man, Joker,”

“Why, thank you Harleen, what a compliment. I’ll pay you one in return: your hair looks quite nice today.” Joker interrupted. Harleen blinked a few times before refocusing on what she was going to say.

“As I was saying, you’re a smart man, so I have a hunch that you know something. You have eyes and ears everywhere: I know this, you know this, and Arkham himself probably knows this too. So spill.”

“Touchy today, aren’t we? Did someone you know get hurt?”

“No, no one that I know or was with last night got hurt, but honestly Joker, you seem a bit too pleased by the news of last night’s events.” Harleen pursed her lips. She also didn’t want to mention the conversation that she and Joan had earlier about the call from Commissioner Gordon about questioning all the big names that were currently in their care. Of course, Dr. Arkham denied all feasible plausibility that any of the patients could have conducted or overseen last night’s events, but Gordon was insistent.

“Oh good,” he purred, drawing out his vowels. “What a shame it would have been.” Harleen had a feeling he didn’t really think that.

“What do you know, Joker? Don’t play around.”

“But I always play around, Harleen, don’t you know this by now? And to think that you were starting to get to know me, perhaps!” He sighed. “You know, Doc, it gets quite lonesome sometimes, always having to play with yourself, without any company. Sometimes you just need another person around, you know?” He leered. Harleen ignored his innuendo; she prided herself on steeling herself against them lately. She shuffled with her notepad and took out a couple of the pictures she had printed before this session.

“This seems like a moniker that would reflect your style of play, wouldn’t you say?” Harleen laid a few pictures out in front of him yet far enough that his cuffed hands couldn’t reach them. The Joker was still healing, his fingers tapped together, dressed out of his typical straight jacket and in the well-worn standard-issue scrubs. She had become accustomed to the sight of his tattoos, the way his arms flexed when he moved, and the more natural way his body shifted when he stood. In front of her patient were multiple pictures depicting the vandalism of the evening: buildings covered in graffiti, smashed trashcans and city mailboxes, shattered venue windows, dented and painted streetlights, and flattened tires.

“Any group of punks could’ve done this; I’m ashamed you think my level of vandalism is this low.” Joker sneered, his eyes scanning over the black and white pictures; Harleen had cursed at the lack of colored ink in the printer of the nurses lounge.

“Yes, but the multiple Batman symbols, clearly a representation of your obsession,” she saw his eyebrows furrow at the word obsession, she would have to remember to make note on that in her session report. “The different interpretations of the devil, the bright and mismatched color scheme, the overall chaos; you can’t say that these don’t resemble a pattern of yours.”

“These don’t resemble a pattern of mine.” Her patient smirked and Harleen had to refrain from rolling her eyes; sometimes she forgot who she was dealing with, forgot how dangerous he was when out roaming Gotham.

“What about this?” Harleen asked as she laid out a birdseye view of Esquire that had been taken by an early morning news helicopter. “Do you know anything about this?”

“Ah, yes, the explosion, how toasty!” He chucked. “Well, did the explosion fit my style? Was it a technique of mine?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet, that hasn’t been released to the public yet. What I heard was that it was a triggerman, which doesn’t fit your type, if I recall correct.”

“Very good, Harleen, good indeed. I don’t like triggermen, there’s far too much,” he paused. “Variability in them. They can chicken out, gain morals, and then I would just have to kill them. Yes, that’s why I prefer the old, reliable method of pipe bombs and countdown clocks. There’s just something so, so classic, so old school, about those methods, don’t you think?” The Joker leaned back, seemingly reminiscing.

“Whose pattern fits this then? Any accomplices of yours?” Harleen asked, pen at the ready.

“First off, I don’t _do_ accomplices, I work on my own and I like it that way. Secondly, do I come off as a snitch to you? No, there’s a sort of, unwritten and unspoken understanding between us bigwigs here in Gotham: we don’t point fingers at one another.” His voice lowered when he shared the unspoken agreement. Harleen held back a sigh and bit her bottom lip, looks like she wasn’t really going to be able to give Commissioner Gordon anything. She hoped Joan and the other doctors were having better luck than she was; there weren’t that many criminals in Arkham currently, which didn’t make things any easier for GCPD.

“Last picture Joker, thank you for being so cooperative,” Harleen stated before she grabbed the last picture she had printed from her notepad, which had nothing written down in it from this session so far. She laid in front of him the five bodies that were found last week outside of Noonan’s, a sports bar that Harleen recognized but never stepped foot in. There were five bodies hanging from their ankles in front of the building: three were hanging by rope from the sign above the entrance of the bar while the other two were hanging from electrical wire. The other two bodies, however, were hanging on opposite streetlights that were next to the corner lot. Their necks had been slashed, in a sawing motion that went roughly one-fourth through the victim’s neck, and each victim, all men, were dressed in business suits. From what Harleen knew from the news, none of these men knew each other, and none of them had been patrons of the bar that night.

“Now that is something a tad more my style,” Joker said, bringing his cuffed hands to rub his chin, which was sporting some slight dark stubble that matched his growing roots. “Alas, not something I could have personally done, due to my unfortunate current living situation.”

“I assume you don’t know anything about it then?” Harleen sighed.

“You know what they say about assuming things,” Joker tsked. Harleen licked her lips as she gathered the photos and tucked them back into her notepad, replacing her pen back into her right hand. She hoped there was something she could salvage of this session yet. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Joan that she had no luck, but to be honest, she hadn’t been expecting much when she started the session. She recalled what he had said earlier, about Joker having eyes and ears everywhere; he always knew what was going on from a gritty back alley in the slums to the back room of the Mayor’s office. Harleen couldn’t really wrap her head around having that much power, that much influence, over so many people.

“I don’t expect you to give me a proper answer to this,” Harleen mused, her thought process whirling like a connect-the-dot in the Sunday newspapers from when she was a little girl. “But if you really do have eyes and ears everywhere, you must know more about last night’s events and the bodies at Noonan’s,” she trailed. “You know who did this, why they did this, and how long all of this took to unfold.”

“Oh really now? And what makes you say that, Doc?”

“Call it a gut instinct.” Harleen said lowly. Her patient leaned forward, the chains on his ankles rattling, and she could imagine the guards rushing in, guns drawn and ready, pointing at his head, just from the movement. She knew that a security guard was watching the therapy session; someone was always watching every session they had. The Joker ran his tongue over his shiny teeth, humming softly in the back of his throat in acknowledgment of her question, and Harleen’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the slow movement.

“There’s always more to the picture, Harleen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harleen's costume: http://www.dhgate.com/store/product/punk-pirate-costume-women-adult-party-halloween/230422083.html
> 
> Kara's costume: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/22/14/f7/2214f74886342b8d53213919794a66c1.jpg
> 
> was going to make a polyvore, like I did with the last chapter, but I found these costumes and liked them. I just don't like how limiting their selection can be sometimes c: anyways! I'm horrible with updating regularly, I'm so sorry, school and mental health get in the way, which is no excuse but still, I'll do my best to be better for you lovely readers!
> 
> Fun fact! I have 19 chapters outlined c: not gonna lie, this was kind of a filler chapter, but I wanted to introduce Gordon and give a peek at the outside world


	7. VII

Smoke and steam dance similarly: tossing, curling, tumbling waves crashing through an open space, disrupting lines of sight, an odd feeling lingering at the back of the throat. The only way to really tell smoke and steam apart is by the smell and the feeling of it’s caress along arms and cheeks and shoulders, all of which Harleen currently had submerged in water that was on the warmer side of hot. Steam floated around the top of the water, mingling back and forth, dissipating when Harleen disturbed it with her finger or by blowing it gently. Her hair was tied in a knot on the top of her head, baby hairs draped along the edge of the bath. The bath salts she had poured in added a light fragrance of vanilla and lavender, turning the water a cloudy light cream color. She scrubbed her loofah along the length of her legs, feet sticking out from the opposite end of the tub as she washed herself down.

Harleen had convinced herself that a bath was the exact thing she needed after the week she’d had at Arkham. She didn’t get much sleep the previous night and when she awoke, she found her muscles feeling tight and cramped. Plus, it was a weekend afterall, Harleen was allowed to have some downtown and relaxation every now and then. She had her phone resting on the closed lid of her toilet, quietly shuffling through the music on her phone. Next to her phone, within reach, was a half-filled glass of red wine. Harleen didn’t fancy wine that much, but there was something so undeniably classic about drinking wine while relaxing in a nice hot bath; this whole process was about not denying herself after all, so she popped open the bottle that had been sitting in her fridge for months now. Whenever the water felt a tad cold for her liking, she just topped it off quickly to bring the temperature back up; Harleen wanted this to last as long as she could. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so calm, so in control of everything around her, without a single care or pressure or stressor in the world. Just herself, some music, a glass of wine, and the steady beating of her heart.

However, good things never last, as Harleen has come to learn many times. She didn’t want to think about work and the Joker when she was supposed to be relaxing, but she couldn’t help where her thoughts drifted.

 

♢♢♢

 

“I know we’ve discussed this before, albeit some time ago, but what would you define as hope, Joker?” Harleen asked, her chin resting on her knuckles, pen held loosely between her pointer and middle fingers.

“A mockery of sanity,” her patient mused between clasped fingers, his index fingers poised like a steeple in front of his face. His wrists were handcuffed, as were his ankles, and the healing process was nearly done for his broken fingers. Part of Harleen felt unready for Joker to be back in a straight jacket, but perhaps it was the best; she always felt consumed by his tattoos, her eyes dragging over them during every session, as if she simply couldn’t help herself.

“So, a joke?” Harleen asked, writing down what he had said. Her patient hummed in response, apparently he didn’t need to vocalize his agreement or lack thereof. “So is there a punchline to hope? Since there’s a punchline to every joke,” she trailed off.

“Failure.”

“Would you care to explain, dive deeper into what you mean by that?”

“The punchline of hope, Doctor, is when whatever you were hoping for doesn’t come true. A certain present, grade on a test, a relationship ends, the victim of the car crash succumbs to their injuries, there’s no pudding served at lunch.” He grinned. Harleen bit her lower lip.

“Well, that seems simple enough,” Harleen spoke to herself.

“Simple? Oh don’t be so daft! There’s nothing simple about failure, oh no, no. Failure is more than just a personal absence or lack of being enough. There are, let’s say, _forces_ at work, conspiring.”

“What would you define these forces as?”

“Fate, perhaps? The undeniable truth that we are all just a spec, a grain of sand, in the desert of the universe?” Harleen nodded as she wrote down ‘existential nihilism.’

“So why bother hoping if it doesn’t matter in the long run?” She asked. Her patient leaned back with a shrug. “Why tell jokes then? Why fight Batman? Why do anything if it doesn’t mean much in the long run?”

“Because of hope, Harleen!” He laughed when Harleen sighed at the cyclicality of the conversation. “Are you having trouble wrapping your head around this?”

“No, not at all,” Harleen muttered. “There is something that I have been having trouble, so you say, wrapping my head around. It would mean a great deal to me if you could clear it up for me.”

“Oh of course, anything for my dear Doctor!” He cheered, eyes wide.

“You see, Joker, I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that you just, I don’t know how to say it,”

“If you can’t say it, then you don’t know it!” Her patient interrupted. He laughed at the look on her face, trying to regain her train of thought.

“I don’t understand, I can’t comprehend how you’re you; that’s the most plain way that I can say it, I think. There must have been a pre-Joker era, you weren’t created in your mother’s womb with your opinions and outlook towards humanity and Batman and Gotham. So where did this persona come from? What triggered your transformation?”

“You believe I am a persona, Harleen?” The Joker’s voice was low, deep, his face straight and eyes seeming to not gleam with the too bright light of the room.

“I believe that this is your front stage conceptual character, what you want your audience to see. There’s flare, drama, stage presence surrounding everything that you do, doesn’t that ever become tiring? There must be some time that this mask slips off, there must be a time before the mask was ever on. So what’s really behind the face paint, the hair dye, the characteristic laugher? Who’s back stage, behind the scenes, pulling the ropes and conducting the lighting and sound cues?”

“Clever scenario,” her patient chucked briefly. “So you’re wondering who else is there?”

“Not that you’re two different people, but maybe two different faces that you put forward.”

“Are you implying that I’ve got multiple personalities? Am I schizo, Doctor? Schedule the lobotomy!” His voice bellowed through the room.

“No, no that’s not what I’m trying to say.” Harleen ran her hand through her hair, which was hanging loose down around her shoulders. “I just can’t get rid of the nagging gut feeling I have that there’s more behind the Joker that we all see, that there are sides of you that you don’t bring out in public. That there’s something inside you reminiscent of who you were before your change, before you became the criminal you are today.”

“Have you ever seen someone die in front of you, Harleen?” He asked, leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him on the table. Harleen blinked, shaking her head no. “I don’t mean being shot in the head, that’s too quick. Have you ever seen someone die _slowly_ ?” Harleen shook her head no again. “You haven’t really _lived_ until you’ve seen someone’s life leave their eyes. Until you’ve seen the whites of their eyes turned muddy brown, rusty, dirty blood, with dilated pupils, blue nail beds and a dehydrated tongue, no reaction to any physical stimuli. No, Harleen, you’ve never really lived, never really experienced life until you’ve seen someone lose theirs.”

Harleen wasn’t sure what to write or if she was even supposed to be writing at all. The way he spoke painted such a detailed picture in her mind, it was as if she could see someone lying in a hospital bed, dying to a disease that they knew was going to kill them in the long run, accepting that fact that they wore a DNR band on their wrist. Harleen couldn’t imagine having that poor of a quality of life.

“I know what you’re picturing Harleen, some old geezer lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by their friends and loved ones. No, that’s not the situation that I’m going for here. No, this person is alone, lying on the cold, hard ground of a dilapidated building. What went wrong here? How did he get himself into this situation, where he’s slowly bleeding out from a stab wound in his abdomen, alone and shaking? Quietly crying, sobbing through the pain, but what’s that in the shadows?” He brought his hands up to his face, which his restraints barely allowed him to do, as if searching for something in the distance, outside of the therapy room.

“There are people in the warehouse! Oh quick, quick! Go help the dying man! Why aren’t they running to his aide? Why are they walking, calmly, is someone whistling? Is that a laugh in the background? No, they’re talking, someone is speaking to the man bleeding out on the ground. Shh, I can’t hear what they’re saying! Oh look! The man walking forward is holding something, what is he holding? Come on now! Walk a little closer, step into the light so your audience can see what you’re holding! Ah! There it is - the knife! The culprit of this dastardly deed! Now let’s have our eyes travel up that arm, shall we? What do we have here? Oh, goodness! His shirt is covered in blood, it looks like too much to have come from the man with just one stab wound; then again, he is bleeding out, so it must be rather deep. There’s blood on his face, now that’s unsanitary, unhygienic; he could get a disease! His mouth is moving but I can’t tell what he’s saying, can you? He’s wiping his face with the back of his hand, but it’s really just smearing the blood around. Oh, is it even on his teeth too? Well now that’s surely not good for him. I still can’t hear what he’s saying! But oh, this is the moment! Look at the dying man, blood pooling around the attacker’s feet, what nice loafers he’s wearing! He’d better make sure they don’t get stained. Our victim here doesn’t bother covering his stab wound anymore, the blood just kept pouring through his fingers anyway, there’s no sense trying to delay the inevitable, that’s just silly. He’s coughing up blood clots now, we’re getting close to the end, ladies and gentlemen! Now if only we could see who was holding the knife? Wait, their face is coming to focus! I can make out some of their facial features! What’s that on his cheek? Quite a long, slender face, distinguished features. Oh well would you look at that, it was me this whole time!” A wide, wicked grin broke out across his face, belly-deep laughter bouncing off the walls. “You would have thought I’d recognize myself!” He spoke between laughs.

Harleen had her hand to her mouth, tears falling out of her eyes. She felt shaky and unsteady. The Joker ran his tongue across his teeth. He hadn’t broken eye contact with her throughout the story.

“That’s a story that no one has heard, Harleen. It was just that man and I in that warehouse years ago. I can’t remember why he got on my shit list at first, but he just had to go, as some people do. Everyone’s replaceable, you know, and everyone’s time comes to an end. Now, as you were saying about this, persona that I put on for others, do you still think that’s legitimate? I didn’t have an audience in that warehouse, no henchmen inside, no news reporters or police officers, or dear old Batman himself. No, this was just me and a dying man, whose last breaths I wrought out of his body. I killed him, watched him die for two hours, his blood soaking into my clothes, hair, skin. And no one saw, no one came to help him, no one intervened on his behalf. So, Harleen, I would like to know if your theory has changed at all. So, has it? Is there anything that indicates that I’m just a character, an identity, a mask that comes on and off at my own discretion? Is there?”

 

♢♢♢

 

Harleen couldn’t shake that conversation, couldn’t mute out the way that his voice shook and cracked as he yelled, his voice grabbing the attention of the two guards outside, who had barged in with guns drawn, only to see the doctor crying with her hands to her face. The session ended after that, immediately followed by a conversation with Joan, who had been alerted about the yelling by security; she was in Harleen’s office before Harleen made it back herself. Harleen had mascara running down her cheeks, which she was rubbing at furiously, blabbering to Joan unintelligibly. Harleen sat her down and knelt in front of her, wrapping her hands around Harleen’s, asking her to calm her breathing and explain what happened. Harleen couldn’t stop sobbing about his lack of humanity, the animal inside him, no it wasn’t an animal, but some sort of demon figure wearing human skin. This made Joan sigh, wondering what happened to the woman who believed he was just a man; here she was now taking back any semblance of humanity she instilled in him.  

But sitting in her bath, Harleen wondered if she was too quick to jump to conclusions. Maybe all of it was an act? Had she really played right into his hands and fallen for every word he said, hook, line, and sinker? Harleen shouted, at herself, at the Joker, at the lack of certainty towards the situation. Her hands were knotted in her hand, her eyebrows scrunched together in frustration. How could she even be sure that the story was real? The man the Joker described had no telling features, no identification, and it’s not like stabbings are a rare occurrence in the city; another victim would be just that, a number. He could have completely falsified the whole thing in order to shake Harleen out of her wits, to get her riled up and scared. Reflecting, Harleen wasn’t sure if she had ever actually felt scared of the Joker at any point during her sessions with him; sure, she’d been intimidated, but out right scared? No! She knew that there was security watching the tape, who had communications with the guards outside the door through earpieces should anything go wrong inside the room. Plus, the Joker was always restrained, though she knew that he could harm someone without his hands, but how much could he really do with every ligament chained to a chair? Well, other than just stand up with the chair and make a run for it, the thought of which had Harleen giggling incessantly in her tub.

If he had wanted to scare Harleen, he did. She was shaken and afraid, but she was not weak. She was going to continue her sessions with her head held high, respectful, however, of the power dynamic in their relationship. Doctor-patient relationship. If anything, feeling fear towards the Joker only made her want to dig deeper, instead of shying away, which he probably anticipated, though knowing him, he has plans for whatever Harleen has tucked up her sleeve; there was no surprising the man that was behind every surprise known to Gotham. So she’d return to work next week feeling focused and refreshed, ready to tackle her patient yet again and determined to get farther than she had the week before. And as long as she had that mindset, there was nothing that could stop her!

But where to start? Well, at the beginning, of course! In order to understand her patient, she had to know about his creation, which he so adamantly denies ever happened. Harleen knew things didn’t just come into being without some sort of pressure, some collision of elements and compounds; science told her that much. But psychology, sociology, the life she dedicated towards studying people, towards bettering mental quality of life? She sifted through what she learned in college, her residency, different symptoms of relevant disorders and diseases in the DSM-IV, which of course she read in it’s entirety many times.

What was her patient’s trigger? Great loss has been known to change people, some for the better while others for the worse. Personal loss affects everyone differently and some people can’t handle that. The Joker didn’t seem to care about material things, however, despite the flashy, glamor lifestyle that he tends to lead outside of the asylum. Those items don’t mean much to him, they just reinstate his superiority, maintain the image he wants to portray. There aren’t any family members on record, incarcerated or not, and there are no notes in Arkham about the Joker ever discussing his parents outside the context of some crude joke. So losing his family couldn’t have been a catalyst. A girl? Harleen sank deeper into her tub with that though, water rising past her mouth. No, Joker said he works alone and he likes it that way, but could a girl have given him that opinion? No, Harleen just couldn’t wrap her head around her patient being pushed past the tipping point due to something some girl did; no person held that much power, strength, influence in the Joker’s life.

Wait, one person did.

Batman.

Both men had an obsession with one another, a never-ending battle that will bring them both to their graves, Harleen had no doubt about that. They both beat each other up so harshly, breaking bones and splitting lips. Harleen remembered what the Joker looked like when he came in for his most recent stay at Arkham. He had three cracked ribs, a fractured wrist, a dislocated shoulder, and multiple contusions all over his face and body. There was no doubt Batman had given him those injuries, since he was the one who delivered the Joker to the police, _before_ receiving any medical attention. The Joker may be a criminal, but he was still a human, and deserves to at least be treated as such. And how good was Batman really if he beat up a man and then just ditched him unconscious on the front steps of the GCPD building? Yeah, sometimes you’ve gotta fight for what you believe in, but where is the line between vigilante justice and terrorism? Because honestly, the line was seeming pretty blurred for Harleen when it came to the city’s revered Dark Knight. She wasn’t certain when the line started to become fuzzy for her, but she knew for a fact that she couldn’t support that masked madman after how easy it was for him to disregard human rights. He had been so flippant about his delivery of the Joker; Harleen was sure he didn’t even get medical attention for hours until after the injuries occurred and treatment came from biased, angry doctors and nurses in a locked down hospital wing _outside_ of Gotham. So there was that transportation time to count in as well, more time for the Joker to be treated no better than a decaying piece of meat, trash littering the sidewalk that needed to be thrown away.

Well, Harleen wasn’t going to just throw the Joker away; no, she was going to do better than that. She was going to help him, like she swore to help people when she started her career. She may not be a medical doctor, but she was still a doctor, and all doctors followed the Hippocratic Oath, to never do harm unto another human. Harleen wasn’t going to be able to erase the past harm done unto her patient, but she damn sure was going to do whatever she could to help her patient in his current situation.

And for Batman? Karma will come around to bite him in the ass. It was just a matter of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna try to be more regular with updating, things are calming down in my personal life, which should help a bunch. No visuals or anything in this, just some good 'ole fashioned dialogue and character progression!
> 
> Thank you for reading, I really do appreciate every kudos, bookmark, & comment. I've always loved writing and always wanted to publish a multi-work series here on ao3, but I've never had the right story that I wanted to follow, and I think I've finally found what I've been looking for with these two. I'm really looking forward to exploring Harleen and Joker's characters more, though I'm not sure I want to dive into the mystery of the Joker's character, I'm part afraid that I wouldn't do justice trying to write his thought process and explain his actions, when he doesn't always think things through and acts spontaneously without explanation. Ya know?
> 
> Have a wonderful weekend!
> 
> PS - WHY ARE CHAPTERS SO LONG ON GOOGLE DOCS (so that I can write on my phone using the app when I'm not on my computer) BUT SO SHORT HERE. LIKE THIS WAS 6 OR SO PAGES GRR I JUST WANNA GIVE NICE LONG CHAPTERS, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR?


	8. VIII

Harleen turned her head, still being able to see the small snowflakes falling through the barred window of her patient’s treatment room. When she had left her apartment this morning, the air had felt crisp and bitter, reminiscent of oncoming flurries.

“The snow more interesting than our conversation, Doctor?” The Joker asked. She turned her head back toward him. If she looked hard enough, she thought she could see the reflection of snowflakes in the metal caps on his teeth.

“No, nothing is ever more interesting than you, Joker,” she chided with a small smile. “I was just thinking about when I was a little girl, playing in the snow with my brother and sister.” She didn’t care about oversharing, since the Joker had proved he already knew everything about her. There wasn’t any harm in sharing stories and memories, it wasn’t like he could use his family against her; she hadn’t seen or spoken to them since she left for college, which she paid for by working and loans. She had just finished paying off her student loans right before she started working in Arkham.

“Do share,” He said, leaning forward, but in an interested way, not like he was trying to loom over her or scare her into sharing her childhood memories.

“Every year, we would build a snowman, and we would always use the same scarf. It was some ratty woolen one that my dad had; sure, he’d be upset afterwards, but I would just soak it in some warm water and it would all be fine.”

“How old were your siblings?” Joker asked, head tilted to the right. She smirked, of course he already knew this.

“Thomas is two years younger than me, Holly three. When we were little, my parents somehow managed to save the arguments for when we were all at school, though that changed once I got into high school. Dad wouldn’t come home until two or three in the morning, my mom would be too high out of her mind to take care of us sometimes, so I would have to do the laundry, cook dinner, help Tommy and Holly with their homework, all the kind of stuff a fourteen year old shouldn’t have to worry about.” She paused, eyes falling down to the notebook in front of her. “I felt guilty when I moved into my aunt’s house, but she helped me realize that it wasn’t a bad thing to put myself first. Tommy and Holly already had bad habits, I guess she wanted to save the one decent part of her brother’s family that was left.”

“Family is overrated anyway,” the Joker input.

“I realized that as I got older, but there are still parts of me that remember building snowmen, wrapping lights around our fake Christmas tree, helping Tommy and Holly make Christmas cards early on Christmas morning.” Harleen’s voice faded off.

“Those memories aren’t real, Harleen; I’m sure that if you look closer, you’d be able to see the toxicity of your parents in the background.”

“Who’s the doctor and who’s the patient in this session, hmm?” Harleen smirked, which was returned by her patient when she looked up.

“I was just saying,” he paused. “Those memories are all clouded by a fog of ignorance, a psychological refusal to see anything other than what you want to see, so that you can claim you had some semblance of a happy or normal childhood.”

“My childhood was innocent,” Harleen was cut off by a loud bark of laughter.

“Innocent!” He repeated, his laughter loud and obnoxious. “You were the farthest from innocent, Doctor, need I remind you of the cigarettes you stole from your parents and sold around school so that you could fund a gymnastics drop-in every now and then? Or so that you could take the bus to Metropolis on the weekends and shoplift new clothes for school?”

“No, you don’t need to remind me. I wasn’t a child at that point.” She muttered. “I was innocent when I was a child, though. I was normal and believed in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, all of that crap. I had a normal and functional family.”

“That’s ignorance, not innocence. You believed in those figures because you didn’t know better, you believed what everyone told you as real. And as for your family, you saw them through rose colored glasses, from a shroud of disbelief. Come on Harleen, you’re a smart, educated young woman, I thought you were better than this.” He tsked.

Harleen couldn’t explain why but part of her gut felt like it fell to her feet when he, essentially, said that she had disappointed him. Harleen had spent numerous therapy sessions of her own discussing her family, the negative and positive, albeit not many, effects they had on her. His words were ringing in her ears and it was like she couldn’t get the fact that he was disappointed out of her head. She swallowed around the lump in her throat, trying to clear it before speaking again, why couldn’t she compose herself?

“You know Doc,” he started. “I couldn’t tell you the last time I felt the chill that accompanies freshly fallen snow, the taste in the air right before the clouds open up.” The confession had Harleen’s mouth dropping open. Her patient was now staring out the window that she’d been looking out earlier and Harleen found herself transfixed. It seemed like his eyes tracked the movement of every single snowflake, following their freedom when he had none.  Harleen felt her eyes tingle but she quickly blinked away any tears that wanted to form; she had to remain professional.

“Well, if we work together and you cooperate with the treatment plan here, perhaps you’ll be able to.” Harleen mused. He gave her a slight chuckle in return.

“Your optimism is very amusing, Doctor, but we both know I won’t be out of here any time soon.”

“May I be honest?” Harleen asked and he redirected his focus back onto her. “Every time you’ve been locked up or incarcerated anywhere, in Gotham or not, you always break out. So what’s the difference this time?”

He kept eye contact with her as the guards entered the room to take him away. Of course their session would end before she could get an answer out of him. He didn’t blink as they confined him to a wheelchair, strapped and cuffed him, or as she stood collecting her things. Harleen watched as her patient retreated down the hall and wondered if he would’ve, if they’d had time, answered the question or not.

 

♢♢♢

 

Harleen sat in her apartment, recollecting her session with the Joker earlier that day. She had spent the rest of her workday thinking about her patient’s theoretical answer, whether it would have been serious, if it would have eluded to a planned escape attempt. She also thought about the insight he’d given her about her childhood. It had been quite some time since Harleen had fondly thought back on her family, not that she was doing so now, but she had shared happier memories today that she hadn’t thought of in years.

Her mind drifted, wondering what Thomas and Holly were up to, if either of them were incarcerated, if they even graduated high school. She wondered if her parents still lived together, if her dad still had the same job as when she left, which she doubted. Hell, she wondered if they were even alive. Harleen stayed with her aunt during holiday breaks, who dissuaded her from visiting her parents. They never checked in on whether or not she was okay, how classes were going, if she was home for the summer or not. So she stopped bothering about them at all. Her aunt didn’t comment on the collecting piercings, on dying her hair, and the tattoo she found out about after her first summer break. In her eyes, Harleen was still the smart, driven, and beautiful girl that she had always been, and for some reason, that didn’t change when Harleen had been arrested.

Harleen had a run-in with some wrong people. She didn’t know how but she found herself hanging out on the wrong side of town, partying with prostitutes and heroin dealers. They’d approached her when they found out that she sold joints on the low; she had justified it then by telling herself that she’d never be able to get an apartment, a car, or save towards her loans by working just one minimum wage job, even though she worked whenever she wasn’t in class. One of the girls she sold to, Harleen couldn’t remember her real name, invited her to hang with some friends of hers and Harleen figured why not, she could take one shift off work.

She never smoked, never did any of the drugs they did, but she started hanging out with them more and more frequently, partying with them. One of the guys said she should sell for him, but Harleen was insistent that she wasn’t a big-time seller and didn’t want to split any of her profits. Harleen sat awake most nights, wondering what she was doing, who she was associating with, but she never convinced herself to stop. Harleen was known to have an impulsive side, hell, half of the piercings she got were impulsive. It was on impulse that she decided to sell joints, hooking up with her plug so that she wouldn’t have to give him any of the money. He hadn’t been her first, so she didn’t really mind that much; after her first relationship, which lasted a couple months her freshman year of college, sex and hooking up just didn’t hold that much emotionally to her. Yeah, it felt different when she loved her partner, like Brandon for example, but in the long run, it was about her pleasure and being able to focus on the moment, keep her mind from wandering all sorts of places.

All of her friends, if she could even call them that, had been high and they were hanging out in one of the whore houses they frequented. Harleen tended to stay away, quickly getting tired of being propositioned, but she just sat with the guys, or pimps really, while the girls took guys to upstairs. She would sit at a table in the backroom, surrounded by pistols and scales, doing homework while the guys did lines and packaged products. For not giving them any money, Harleen was surprised they let her stay around for so long; apparently, one of the guys was sweet on her. Which, Harleen couldn’t deny, she was a little sweet on him too.

His name was Daniel Kelly, which had been hard for her to figure out. He typically went by D, DK, or Kong, which Harleen surmised was from DK being another nickname for the character Donkey Kong. He flirted with her, held out joints for her to lick shut, always sat with his hand on her thigh or arm around her shoulders when he was able to. It was a couple weeks into hanging out with his group when they first slept together. They were both drunk, he was stoned off one of her joints, which she never charged him for, and they had both been tense all night. They were at a party, someplace she hadn’t been before, and she had been content spending the night by his side, which she convinced herself was for her safety. He had pulled her into a guest bedroom, which stank of weed and beer, and had each other undressed in seconds. It had been rough, his hands tight around her wrists, the bed banging against the wall every time he’d thrust into her. Her toes curled into the duvet below her, which was stained by who knows what, and her chest was arched against his. Harleen would get hotter thinking about his tattooed back, his muscles making the feathered wings look as if he was flying, and the image would make Harleen scream.

She’d been curled up next to him on a ratty couch with him in that backroom, which was a mix of a kitchen and a sitting room. He had his left arm draped across her shoulders and had her pulled closed, texting from one of the burner phones that was passed around the guys. Her legs were draped in his lap, eyes closed, feeling relaxed despite the muted sounds of girls upstairs. Her head was tucked against his neck when the shouting started. A loud bang caught all of their attention, men yelling that they were police, and DK had jumped up, pistol drawn from the waistband of his jeans. Her hands flew over her head, burying into the couch cushions the best that she could, as police stormed in and gunfire started. She didn’t learn it until later, when she was being questioned, but DK and his buddies had jumped out one of the windows, since police had stormed in through the backdoor. Two girls upstairs and Harleen were left in that house, detained and charged, separated to tell their sides of the story.

Harleen cried as they read her rights, cried against the cut of the handcuffs on her wrists, her legs curled up against her chest in the backseat of a squad car. She spent an hour in an interrogation room at the precinct, where she learned the cops had been staking out the place they raided for half a year. She was charged with prostitution and criminal conspiracy, both of which she denied, and was able to afford a lawyer, who charged here a grand flat fee to represent her. She gave the police the number DK used most frequently, the burner phone he’d been texting on, which police apparently had as evidence. She described what his old car looked like, down to the model, but said the plates were most likely fake. She gave one other address of the three houses they usually hung out in. Sure, she was a snitch, but she wasn’t going to lose everything due to these people, especially to some asshole who she meant nothing to. She had been mad at the time that a male cop had been questioning her, and at the initial refusal for her to speak with a female to make her feel more comfortable. One did eventually come in, though, to ask about her personal relationship with DK, and Harleen couldn’t hold back the tears. The detective said she understood, guys can be manipulative and conniving, they can seem great until they ditch you at a crime scene. She gave Harleen her fingerprint order and said her arrest report would arrive in the mail, along with the news that her school was going to be contacted.

Her university contacted her aunt before she could come up with a better explanation for what happened. She’d been furious, to say the least, but said she’d help Harleen as long as she learned her lesson, as long as she swore to stay straight from now on, which of course she agreed to. Harleen met with student conduct, who was a representative from the school board, who had wanted to suspend her. Her only option, however, was to sign a responsibility plea, saying that she was essentially guilty as charged and accepted responsibility for her actions. Her agreement also came with six mandatory therapy sessions with a university counselor, which the conduct representative insisted was to make sure she was mentally alright, because why else would a smart and beautiful young woman, with such a good life ahead of her, get herself into such a situation? The conduct woman looked at her with contempt, as if she was a poor little girl lost in the world, and it made Harleen’s blood boil. She went to the six sessions begrudgingly, annoyed that she had a male therapist, and spouted nonsense about self-esteem issues and wanting to feel wanted. When the charges were dropped, and the sessions were over, it all just faded into the past and Harleen moved on with her life. She waited until her possibility of academic suspension ended before selling joints again; yeah, she’d learned her lesson, and that was to look out for herself and herself only when it came to her dealings. She slept with her plug once a month, sold joints on the weekend, and kept up with her school work and assured her aunt that she was fine.

Horns honking outside her apartment, along with mingled shouting for a minute, brought Harleen out of her sophomore year revery. She wiped her eyes upon discovery that she’d been crying and went to wash her face of the mascara that had dried against her cheeks. She washed her face with warm water, taking her time, breathing slow through her nose to recollect herself. All of that happened so long ago, she was over it. She couldn’t help but wonder how much of that her patient knew about. He knew about her selling joints, referenced her plea agreement, but how? The charges against her had been expunged, her record was cleared, and legally it was as if the whole thing never happened. So how the hell had he been able to find all that information on her over half a decade after the fact?

The Joker was an intelligent mastermind, an expert at manipulating people and scenarios, and was integral in so many underworld dealings through Gotham and neighboring cities even. Harleen shouldn’t have been that surprised by the amount of information he knew; there was no doubt he probably had a few police officers on his payroll. He was a brilliant man, there was no way to avoid that. The Joker was smart and cunning, albeit a tad maniacal and violent. He holds such interesting world views and opinions, which Harleen couldn’t help but admire, since she loved an intellectual challenge, which her patient surely was. But Harleen couldn’t forget that she worked at an asylum for the mentally and criminally insane, she couldn’t put her patient on some sort of pedestal. Harleen couldn’t take what he said at face value, she had to remember that there was always reasoning behind everything he said and everything he did.

_But that would be ignorant._

 

♢♢♢

 

The sky was overcast as she drove to the asylum for work, having stopped at a bakery on the way since she’d left earlier that day. There was a small pastry bag in her passenger seat, which contained a buttery, flaky croissant that Harleen couldn’t wait to eat. She didn’t always eat breakfast, never being hungry in the morning, but she felt like indulging herself when she woke up. The snow was a couple inches deep on the sides of the road and the parking lot for the asylum had been haphazardly cleared. She looked at the snow when she parked, running her fingers through her wavy hair, which hung along her shoulders. She thought back to her last session and felt a pang in her heart; he had shared something so innocent with her, though she couldn’t help but reprimand herself for using that word. Afterall, was anything or anyone actually innocent in this world?

She was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she didn’t realize she was in her office until she was sitting down behind her desk. She had methodically signed in, gone through security, and gotten to her room as if on autopilot. She took her croissant out, took the little plastic knife out of the bag and put some apricot jam on it, which was courtesy of the little bakery. She hummed at the deliciousness on her tongue and weakly scolded herself for not eating breakfast at the bakery. It wasn’t like she had much to do before her one o’clock session with the Joker anyway.

She putzed through the day, doing odd things for Joan to make her life easier, since there wasn’t much of her own work that Harleen had to do. She took the small bag from the bakery and rolled it into her pocket, forgoing her lab coat, which sat on the back of her chair. It wasn’t mandatory for her to wear it, just kind of recommended. She strolled to the therapy room with her notebook in hand, her teeth chewing on her bottom lip, picking little chapped pieces away.

“You’re looking beautiful as always,” the Joker said after the guards left the room. Harleen tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking down at the table momentarily. Joan had told her earlier that this was his last day before wearing a straightjacket again, his fingers being mostly healed from when he’d broken them a while back. His hands were cuffed in front of him, which were chained to the table.

“I have something for you, actually.” She shared, looking back up at her patient. His lips parted, sitting in an o-shape, head titled. He leaned forward as she shifted her back towards the camera in the corner of the room, trying to obstruct her movements and hide what she was doing. Technically, she wasn’t allowed to bring anything to their sessions besides a notebook and pen, anything else was considered a potential threat.

She took the rolled up bag out from her pocket, which still smelled remotely of her croissant and the fresh brewed coffee the bakery served. Cautiously, she put the bag on the table, which held all of the Joker’s attention. Harleen rolled down the sides as she opened it and slowly pushed it towards her patient. Inside the bag was a little bit of snow that she’d collected from the parking lot during her lunch break. The Joker looked at the bag curiously before bringing his eyes back to hers.

“I thought about what you said in our last session about the snow, and while I can’t bring you outside the next time it’s predicted to snow, I figured I could at least bring you a little bit.” She paused, licking her dry lips and taking a deep breath. What on earth was she doing? She watched his fingers stretch, shifting his wrists in his cuffs, and rest the tips of his fingers on the little bit of fluffy and icy snow that Harleen had collected. His mouth spread into a huge, wide grin as he looked back up at Harleen.

“Thank you.” He said, smile still on his face, a certain warmth in his voice that paralleled the chill of his fingers, which were almost as pale as the snow.

“You’re welcome.” She smiled back. “I’ll have to take it before the sessions ends, but I don’t know, I just wanted to do a little something for you.” She rambled, diverting her eyes from his. She heard his fingers moving throughout the bag and watched them disappear and reappear in the snow a few times. Her chest felt warm and in that moment, she knew that she hadn’t made a mistake, that she had probably made this man happy, and that was, without a doubt, the least that she felt he deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa! Another chapter! I wrote this in a couple hours since I couldn't sleep and it's now 6am, happy Friday y'all! Enjoy some backstory (which I hope you like, my Harleen doesn't have a goody two-shoes backstory) and some fluff! 
> 
> Harleen's outfit (though never explicitly described in the chapter): http://www.polyvore.com/chapter/set?id=210521598
> 
> Have a happy & fun (& safe!!) Halloween if I don't post before then! (which I doubt I will but who knows)


	9. IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saran-wrap: it's another word for plastic wrap, you know, like cling film? In case people don't use that terminology (whoa! a note at the beginning!)  
> *insert author rage about chapters not being as long as I want them to be grrrrrrrld kahksjf zjkfkskfjhakjfhak*

Harleen was so focused on her treatment of the Joker that everything else just passed by in a blur. She spent her days counting down until her next therapy session, the next time she would get to hear his voice, the harmonious lift of his laughter. Briefly, she would take the time to pause, self-reflect, take the time to process the thoughts that were becoming so forefront and autonomous in her mind. She knew she was getting too close to her patient, she was losing the professional mask that she wore, but what kind of mask was she swapping it out for? She was a tad frightened to find out. But she also felt a thrill similar to when she was younger.

Harleen knew she did bad things throughout her life, she wasn’t claiming to be some poster child, preaching goodness and light. She would shoplift candy bars from the grocery store, clothes from changing rooms at the shopping mall, little things that she felt were innocent enough. Granted, she didn’t necessarily _need_ extra candy bars for her siblings when their parents were fighting, but she had to be able to provide for her siblings. Tommy and Holly didn’t experience what life was like when it was just her and her parents, but she wasn’t resentful for that. She wasn’t above sitting on the curb in Metropolis, where a little girl sitting alone wasn’t as common as seen in Gotham. Turns out, in Gotham, kids pulled the same shit that she always did; she thought she was the only one because no one else in her area acted the ways she did, reasoned through her actions in the same way. But in Gotham? Lots of shady and manipulative people called Gotham their home, which gave the city a unique atmosphere and reputation. It also tended to have a gloomy atmosphere from the proclivity of clouds and fog to hang low around the skyscrapers of the city.

A message pinging on her phone brought Harleen out of her thoughts. She must have forgot to turn it off when she got to work that morning. She took it out from the top drawer she had slipped it into and looked to see who had texted her. Of course, like she should have expected, it was Kara sharing a short video that she had taken from her parent’s dining room in Massachusetts. It showed a nicely decorated table, four spots set at the table. In the background of the video, she heard Kara’s brother Kyle playing with their parent’s Golden Retriever. The message was quick, her saying that she wished Harleen had been able to join them today, inserting a brief “Fuck Arkham!” before saying she loved her.

As long as Harleen and Kara have been friends, they’ve celebrated the big holidays together. It was never said out loud, but Harleen suspected that her friend felt sorry for her. Not in a pathetic way, but Kara had time and time again mentioned how grateful she is for her family, that she didn’t know what she would do if she didn’t have such a strong relationship with them. So Kara absorbed her into the Gregg clan, introduced her to her parents and brother, who eventually introduced her to Brandon, which Kara had begged Kyle to do. “They’re just so perfect together! I mean, look at them!”

Harleen hadn’t felt love towards anyone in her family for a long time, sometimes the word family was enough to leave her cringing. She had loved Caroline and her aunt, but once she graduated college and stopped coming home during it’s holiday breaks, she felt herself pull away from them. She always sent Caroline something for her birthday, but she never went back to visit, never kept in constant contact with anyone from the area. But with Kara and her family? She felt accepted, brought in without question or hesitation. Harleen guessed that Kara had spoken enough about her over time, it had probably slipped that she didn’t have the best connections with her family. Not that Harleen tried to keep it a secret or anything, she wasn’t disgraced by her upbringing or what she did to get through it all, but it wasn’t anyone else’s business how her family worked, or didn’t work for that matter.

Last thanksgiving, she had gone to Kara’s family, still stinging from Brandon having left her months prior. The holiday season before that, she had been with Brandon’s family right outside of New York City, a nice brick house with a long driveway lined by tall trees. Of course everything about it was picture perfect. But last thanksgiving, she was saved a spot at the Gregg table, hugs and cheers and drinks all around. Kyle and his father, Matthew, drank beer together, while Harleen, Kara, and her mother, Michele, sipped on some champagne that was more expensive that Harleen wanted to think about. Football was on the background, Harleen ran her hands all over their long-haired dog, with Kara planning their Black Friday fun. Which of course, they had to participate in every year. Harleen would laugh, chug her flute of champagne, before refilling it and agreeing to join the masses to shop for items that weren’t really saving them that much money in the long run.

This year, however, she wanted to stay in Gotham. She didn’t feel like all the commotion, the flight up north, and having to save face with people who so easily welcomed her into their home every year. It wasn’t that Harleen felt guilty, she doesn’t perceive guilt the way that everyone else seems to; she just didn’t want to have to put up an act. Matthew and Michele would no doubt ask about how work was going and she really wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone about it. The Joker may have been criminally incarcerated, but he still had patient confidentiality, which both Joan and Dr. Arkham had tried to dissuade her on. Both doctors tried to say, that since he was one of Gotham’s most wanted criminals, he didn’t have the same rights, but that went against everything that Harleen was taught in school. She wasn’t sure if the Joker had any concept of trust, but there was something that he felt towards her, some sort of category that he had put her in. Harleen didn’t want to jeopardize the fine line that she was treading with her patient.

She had started out so calculated, precise, and thought her sessions out almost exactly before she would meet with her patient. But now? She found herself speaking before thinking, acting without being conscious or caring about the possible repercussions. She hadn’t gotten in any trouble for bringing in the little baggy of snow, but she didn’t want that to make her become careless. She had brought him some snow one other time after the first, but it didn’t hold the novelty. She had, however, sat outside during her lunch break with her small pastry bag open, catching large snowflakes as they fell from the gray sky. The Joker had stared into that bag for half an hour, silent, slowly blinking. Harleen had wondered if he could see each unique design of the snowflakes that had been presented to him; she hadn’t been able to gather much, not wanting to look suspicious. But the act made her feel light-hearted and she was able to sleep easy that night.

Harleen tucked her phone back into the draw when she heard someone lightly knocking on her door.

“Yes?” She called out. As expected, Joan walked in, dark hair tucked behind her ears per usual. Joan was wearing a pair of dark khaki slacks, a dark red sweater tucked in with a brown leather belt, which of course matched the loafers she was wearing. It wasn’t exactly Harleen’s style, but it worked for the older woman. “Good afternoon, Joan,”

“A little bit late to be the afternoon Harleen, but I’ll accept it,” Joan’s eyes wrinkled as she smiled, which was the biggest sign of her age. Otherwise, the doctor could pass for around the same age as Harleen. “I was surprised when I saw that you were still on the schedule today. You, technically, don’t even have to come in on Thursdays, though your help is always appreciated.”

“I felt like sticking around Gotham this time. I’ve always gone up to Massachusetts with Kara’s family,” Joan nodded in recognition of the name of Harleen’s former co-worker. “But this year, it just didn’t feel right.” Harleen could feel Joan trying to analyze her as she spoke. “What about you Joan?”

“You know I live and breath this asylum Harleen, more-so than Dr. Arkham sometimes.” She winked. “The patients here, most of them don’t have any family of their own. We have a lot of roles here, as do staff at asylums throughout the country. We are more than therapists: we’re parents when we need to be scolding, teachers when we need to educate, and disciplinarians when need be. And if that means spending My holidays here, breathing in the smell of bleached linoleum and mint car fresheners in order to feel jolly, then so be it.”

It was never a doubt in Harleen’s mind that Joan loved working at Arkham Asylum; anyone could tell that as soon as they met her. The older physician was slightly intimidating when Harleen first started working at Arkham, but after sharing salads during her first working day, she knew there was nothing to be nervous about in the slightest.

“So what’s the typical protocol for Thanksgiving?”

“Dinner at five, as usual, but festively catered to the best of the kitchen staff’s abilities. It’s not the most delicious Thanksgiving dinner, but that’s hospital food for you. For the patients that are allowed to eat in general population, those who wish to participate will go around sharing memories of past Thanksgiving meals and what they’re currently thankful for.”

“And those not currently allowed?”

“Our incarcerated patients eat their meal in their usual accommodations, nothing out of the particular for them. Were you expecting anything different honestly?”

“You know,” Harleen paused. “I’ve been making slow, but meaningful, progress with the Joker lately, and I was wondering what chance I would have at sharing dinner with him.”

“What do you think that would accomplish?” Joan asked, resting her head on her knuckles, her elbow on the arm of the chair she was sitting in. Her nude nail polish was starting to chip on her pointer and middle finger.

“The patients approved for communal eating have access to therapists during meal times and in the recreation centers. The patients with certain accommodations, as you worded it earlier, don’t get that. So the Joker, during his numerous stays in the asylum, has spent every holiday meal, every meal nonetheless, eating by himself in his cell under the watch of a guard. Room, excuse me.” Harleen corrected. “So perhaps, if he was able to eat a meal supervised, one-on-one, maybe it’ll spark some memories from past similar meals, perhaps even from his childhood. No one’s tried this before Joan, so literally anything could happen.”

“Exactly Harleen, _anything_ could happen. It might not be something good.” Joan interjected.

“The Joker has never harmed me, never threatened to do so, I don’t think he would break that cycle now.”

“That’s what concerns me sometimes. He’s attacked other staff members, he’s never stayed with a physician as long as he has with you, especially without violence.”

“That must mean something though. What’s the harm in trying this Joan? If we don’t try, we’ll regret it, I can feel it in my bones.”

“Alright,” Joan sighed softly but there was plenty of weight behind it. “I’ll set up your therapy room, that should suffice for the two of you.” She paused. “Go in there with a game plan and be sure you clean up after yourselves. Or, well, be sure you clean up after him.”

 

♢♢♢

 

Five o’clock rolled around and Harleen had her head held straight. She forwent her lab coat, opting to leave it draped over her chair in her office, so that this didn’t feel as formal and clinical. One guard, instead of the typical two, was assigned outside the room, the shortage due to the holiday. The Joker sat in front of her, handcuffed and chained to the table. She used the opportunity to glance at his healing fingers, since he was now back to seeing her in a straight jacket during their sessions; she wasn’t to be sure that wearing it hadn’t impeded their healing. Fortunately, his formerly broken fingers were as pale as the rest of him now. Harleen’s eyes followed the shapes on the fingers of his right hand, each finger sporting the symbol for one of the four houses of a deck of cards. Ironically enough, there was a dark outline of a heart on his ring finger. But Harleen didn’t find herself surprised at her patient making a mockery of love and the concept of marriage. Perhaps she was reading too deep into the meaning of the four tattoos, but she felt like she knew her patient to a certain extent, and he never did anything without reasoning, as much as his crimes and plans seemed unhinged and crazy.

They hadn’t talked much in the ten minutes since the Joker had been brought in and chained down. Following the solitary guard was a nurse pushing a cart, a grim yet unbothered appearance to her round face, their food covered by a layer of saran-wrap. It was silent except for Harleen’s smiled gratitude when the nurse dropped off their dinners. There was enough space for the Joker to move his hands to his plate and mouth, the sound of the chains reverberating in Harleen’s ears. The nurse had given her a packaged knife and fork with her dinner, but not her patient’s, which caused Harleen to realize that he probably ate every meal he has at the asylum with his fingers. Which, he did right in front of her. His bony fingers dipped into a small pile of mashed potatoes, which Harleen thought needed a dash of salt and a lot more butter or cream. There was cranberry sauce on one side of the plate; Harleen could see the ridges from the metal of the can that the product had come from. In the middle of their styrofoam plates sat two dry slices of turkey sans gravy. The Joker kept his eyes on his plate while he picked up a whole slice of turkey and bit into it. Harleen bit her lip, a part of her heart sinking to her feet at the sight in front of her. It felt almost barbaric, the way that her patient was treated sometimes. She understood all the precaution, the tension within the staff, the whispered grudges held against the Joker. It was no secret that Dr. Arkham didn’t like the Joker, as did the majority of the staff that worked around him, though they all held professional facades so as to not lose their jobs. The Joker had hurt a lot of people in his years fighting Batman and wreaking havoc throughout the city; his terror, though Harleen was hesitant to use that word, was felt by almost every citizen in some way, shape, or form.

She stood and knocked on the door, feeling her patient’s eyes on her. The guard opened and Harleen handed him the unopened package of silverware.

“I won’t be needing these, thank you.” He looked at her strangely, but quietly took it from her and shut the door again.

When Harleen turned, the Joker was staring at her. He watched as she walked back to her chair, pulling at the sleeves of her gray turtleneck, heels clicking quietly. She smiled at him, making eye contact for a few seconds, before picking up a piece of turkey and biting into it. The Joker shifted his head back, craning his neck in a fashion that made the veins stick out momentarily. Harleen silently ate her turkey, thinking about where she wanted to start her dialogue with her patient. She’d never been in a situation with him like this. The atmosphere of their usual therapy room felt different, heavier not on Harleen’s shoulders, but deep in her gut, almost warming. She and the Joker made casual eye contact as they ate their portions.

“Thank you for letting me eat dinner with you.” Harleen stated while the Joker bit into a thin wedge of congealed cranberry sauce, leaving his pale fingers dyed red and sticky. It subtlety reminded Harleen of blood. She watched him stick his fingers into the mashed potatoes, which stuck easily to his fingers, curled and scooping the food in an almost obscene way. Harleen cleared her throat quietly.

“Like I had much of a choice, doctor,” Joker mused, tilting his head, strands of dull green hair falling shaggy across his forehead. Harleen had catalogued the decline of the brightness in his hair, making note of it in her head throughout working with him, dark brown roots peeking from his scalp, though they seemed to hold an almost orange hue in the artificial lighting of the room. It reminded Harleen of her early attempts of dying her brown hair with boxed blonde hair dye when she was eighteen, coming out with a coppery color instead of the light blonde that the model was advertizing. She eventually learned to bleach her hair slightly before applying to dye, and as she got older and worked more, she was able to afford trips to the salon every few months, maybe twice a year. Harleen was fortunate that her brunette locks were a lighter shade, albeit somewhat mousy in appearance when she was younger.

“You could have put up a fight, stayed holed up in your room, refused dinner all together,” Harleen trailed off, putting up a mashed potato covered finger with each excuse she listed. The Joker hummed in response. Harleen dreaded when he did that during sessions because she came to learn that he deemed the conversation was over. She wasn’t making as much progress during this meal as she had coerced Joan to believe she could, but Harleen found herself not caring that much, rather enjoying her time with her patient. It was a different scenario than how she usually met with her patient, despite being in the same room. She felt the warm feeling in the bottom of her stomach again. She felt honored to be able to watch the Joker eat, something feeling so personal and intimate about the act. It almost made Harleen blush when she thought too much about seeing this, for lack of a better adjective, vulnerable side of her patient. She doubted there was really anything vulnerable about the Joker when he was outside of the asylum, though.

“Have you ever felt thankful?” She asked, cranberry sauce sticking to the roof of her mouth.

“Have I ever felt relieved, grateful, _pleased_?” He slurred out the last word and Harleen couldn’t help but blush slightly at his innuendo. She heard more than saw the smirk growing on his face, saliva thick on his teeth, tongue running over his top lip.

“You know, has someone or something ever brought you to the point of feeling appreciative?”

“Perhaps when a job goes smoothly, though they don’t have a tendency to do so. Or when a rat snitches on another, truthfully, so that I can execute them both. You know, two birds with one stone. Or, ah, two rats, should I say.”

“So that’s professionally,” Harleen hesitated. “What about in other aspects of your life?”

“Harleen,” he tsked. “My profession _is_ my life. You don’t clock in and out of being a criminal, slinging drugs and guns, running clubs, managing subordinates. Having a strong presence, promoting the image behind the name and doing what needs to be done to keep my assets in line.”

Harleen nodded, blinking absentmindedly as she absorbed what the Joker confided. She hadn’t been let into his criminal dealings in the past. Sure, she knew what he did, the police reports that she had access to as his psychiatrist enlightened her on a lot of what he did. Not to mention the news reports she’d seen since arriving in Gotham years ago, as well as word of mouth incessantly running through the city. This had come from him, however; the Joker had shared a part of his life, his identity, with her, and she couldn’t help but beam internally at what that meant about their progress.

“So you don’t have a lot of time for recreation then?”

“I have a lot of recreational activities, Harleen,” he grinned, the metal in his mouth tinged pink. “There’s always something keeping me occupied. And besides, everything I do has an element of fun. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a very good clown, now would I?” He chuckled to himself. Harleen nodded, he did have a point there.

“It might be stupid to ask,”

“There’s no such thing as a stupid question, Doc.” He interrupted. Harleen took a steadying breath.

“Is there anything that you’ve appreciated at Arkham? Anything that you’ve been thankful for.”

“Is this some sort of performance review? Am I filling out a survey on my treatment here?” He used air quotes around the word treatment. Harleen bit a piece of skin off of her bottom lip.

“Like I said, it was a stupid question. I was just wondering, since the examples you said earlier aren’t something you can experience while you’re in here.” Harleen made eye contact with him, lifting her eyes from where they’d been resting on her half-empty plate. The Joker’s mouth was somewhat tilted downward, eyes big and focused, shallowly breathing through parted lips.

“Doctor Quinzel, I live for these moments with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for being patient when updates get few and far between. There's been a lot going on in my personal life since I started this story - but fret not! I'm not abandoning in the slightest. It's just easy to get side tracked between work, family, school, a relationship, mental health, all that fun stuff that we adults have to deal with every day. And teenagers too! 
> 
> Idk if SS!Joker actually has the finger tattoos that I mentioned but I saw this (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYK4iC0UMAEN2Z9.jpg --> how do you link things in your notes?) and I just loved the idea. Plus, how can a Joker this tatted not have any ink on his right hand? Like there's a big ass mouth on his left, he needed to balance it out fo'sho
> 
> Polyvore: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=211346542
> 
> Also, I was doing some google-fu, and I came across this image: https://65.media.tumblr.com/19e28b910c481e58067421f8910a3a0c/tumblr_o7gayiMokN1vv1frwo1_r1_500.jpg  
> BUT GUYS. Like, this is serious detail work. And it's totally in character for the Joker. I love it.


	10. X

Harleen straightened her red tunic as she rose from her desk, cracking her neck slightly as she went. It was Christmas Eve and she hadn’t intended on stopping by the asylum, but it was on the way to the airport anyway, and it’s not like Harleen had anything else she really had to do. She had packed the night before, with Kara talked excitedly on speakerphone, each with respective glasses of wine. Yeah, Harleen supposed it wasn’t too smart to be traveling on Christmas Eve, which just had to be a Friday this year to add, but she ultimately didn’t mind. Plus, she wanted to give her host family time to just be together; it wasn’t like they were obligated to invite her to their holiday celebrations. Her fingers lingered on the emerald necklace, clutching  lightly at the gemstone. Harleen didn’t keep the majority of the stuff Brandon had given her, donating a lot of it to charity or pawning it off to aid in paying her student loans, but she couldn’t bring herself to part with the beautiful birthstone surrounded by a ring of small diamonds. It had been a birthday present, as well as a reminder of the first time she had told Brandon that she loved him. Even though he was a bitter memory towards the end of their relationship, she didn’t regret the time they spent together. It would have helped if she had known from the beginning that their relationship wasn’t going to work out in the long run, but Harleen figured that was the mysterious beauty behind love: it just can’t be predicted.

Some light flurries had fallen while Harleen had driven over, blanketing the asphalt of the parking lot in splotches, barely filling in the large pothole to the left of the entrance to said lot. Harleen had driven into that pothole many a time when she was new to the asylum and doing so nearly cost her a front tire, but fortunately she wised up really quick. Harleen had a hot chocolate sitting on her desk, the cardboard holder around it festively decorated. She wasn’t the biggest fan of the holiday and found herself recounting childhood celebrations with her family, yet the Joker’s words kept sneaking in around the edges of each one. Lately, Harleen had seen herself nitpicking the memories she had, looking for the twisted and romanticized, trying to see when and why and where her parents started failing one another. They’d never been perfect, but Harleen had never been able to accurately pinpoint when exactly their dynamic changed. Yeah, the arguments, physical and verbal, the days where either parent would go missing for a couple days at the time, her father passed out at a bar or her mom strung out somewhere with other junkies. It was as if the transition from tolerable to absolute despair was completely skipped, no gradual downward slope, just a steep descent to the bottom of a whiskey bottle, the tip of a needle, the bottom of stranger’s pockets, the end of the cigarette, the joint, the chill of metal handcuffs. Harleen never stressed over her actions, didn’t feel guilty for what she did, just claiming the hiccups towards succumbing to her environment. When she graduated, in good academic standing and not a tremendous amount of loan debt, she considered herself a bigger and better person than she was in years prior; she convinced herself that she did what she had to do and didn’t regret her actions. She grew from them, learned valuable lessons, and moved on with her life without any moralistic burden weighing down her shoulders.

Harleen wrapped both hands around the cup on her desk and slowly sipped on the lukewarm drink. There was a pump of peppermint flavoring added, from the barista that winked at her as he finished making her drink, and it was with sip that Harleen allowed herself to grow a wreath around her heart, imagine sleigh bells ringing quietly in the distance, just close enough that she didn’t have to strain her ears to hear, as if she was walking downtown and someone was playing them two city blocks away. Her reverie ended with the tone of her alarm going off, the one that she had set for every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 12:45pm, just in case she found herself lost in her work or in conversation with Joan. Harleen didn’t want to witness the day where she was late to see the Joker, when he was actually cooperative and expecting to see her. Technically, a session hadn’t been scheduled that day, since it was Christmas Eve and a lot of the staff took either today or tomorrow off. Schedules wouldn’t change for the non-criminally incarcerated, because the holiday season can be a tough time for them, but the same respect wasn’t given towards the other patients of the facility. It had been like that for decades, Joan had told her; not once had Joan actually had regularly scheduled sessions with any of her patients on the holidays. When she did see them, she told Harleen it was because she made the decision to do so herself; apparently, Dr. Arkham didn’t feel the criminals had the right to “disrupt the celebrations of the law-abiding citizens who so graciously work at the asylum.” So that’s what Harleen did yesterday. She coordinated with security, to see her patient at their regularly scheduled appointment time, to ensure that there would be sufficient security to watch over their session. Due to it being Christmas Eve, however, the orderlies were slightly short staffed, so it didn’t surprise Harleen that there was only one standing in front of her therapy room. No one else used this room except for her and the Joker; if Harleen had any other patients at the moment, she would see them in the same room.

The orderly looked at her with an eyebrow raised, eyes flicking own to the small box in her hands, wrapped in shiny gold paper with a red bow.

“I cleared this yesterday, it’s been approved. Yes, it’s crucial to the treatment of my patient.” She explained.

“I wouldn’t doubt it, Dr. Quinzel,” the orderly’s deep voice said, starting Harleen minutely because the orderlies rarely ever spoke to anyone. “But you know the precautions. Did Cash clear this?” Aaron Cash was the head of security at Arkham Asylum, and by Harleen’s guess, had been for the past forty years or so, because this job surely showed by the wrinkles around his dark eyes. Harleen _hadn’t_ cleared it with Cash because she couldn’t find him yesterday, so she went with the next best person: the guard that monitors the security cameras from the security office. Yeah, she could have gone to Joan, but Harleen wasn’t sure that the older woman would have allowed it, suggesting something preposterous, like the Joker trying to strangle either Harleen or himself with the ribbon, or suffocate her with the wrapping paper. No, Harleen wasn’t going to mess around with all that nonsense; the Joker hadn’t been anything less than civil with her, except for about two months back when he’d gotten upset about the hickey on her neck. Which Harleen had yet to figure out the reasoning behind.

“You could either trust me or you could call Cash when he’s enjoying today with his grandchildren. I mean, ultimately it’s up to you, but I wouldn’t want to be the one to take him away from his family.” Harleen shrugged nonchalantly.

The orderly seemed to ponder her words before sliding his card and allowing Harleen in without another word. Her patient sat there, sans straight jacket, though Harleen wasn’t completely sure why; she’d given enough time in advance to all parties necessary to prep for the session. She wasn’t going to complain, however, because there was a part of Harleen that couldn’t get enough  of the tattoos that became visible when her patient wasn’t restrained. Harleen always found tattoos hot, from the wings spreading down DK’s back, to the two half sleeves that Brandon sported. There was a little thought bouncing around her head lately that she wanted to get another tattoo, but she wasn’t sure what she’d want or where she’d even want to get it. A decision for another time, she decided.

Harleen’s eyes traced over the thin lines of the cards along his neck, traveling down to the two bright red mouths standing out blood red against his ghostly pale skin. There were multiple haha’s, dark and harsh, that wrapped all the way around his forearm. She slowly dragged her eyes back up to his face, to the little blue star on his temple, the J under his eye, the reminder on his forehead of his psyche to his conversation partner, or whoever happened to be on the wrong side of his gun, Harleen surmised. She finally looked at his eyes, pools of mercury staring back at her, and she forced herself to pull her focus away from his finer details. But not before she saw the forward slant of his shoulders, the slight space between his top and bottom lip, the way his left pinky was extended straight out. Just little things she had noticed over time, little quirks and mannerisms, things she always felt herself looking for before she ever opened her mouth, trying to read his body. She could have spent hours reading the story of his tattoos, reading into the story of his eyes, diving behind the color and brushing her fingers along his neurons.

“My, my, didn’t expect to see you today.” The Joker said, tilting his head slightly to the right, his shaggy green hair highlighting from the artificial light above them. She wondered how the sun would pick up and accentuate different hues of green as it traveled throughout the sky, from dawn to dusk. His eyes narrowed downward to the gift she had placed on the table right in front of her, audibly inhaling through his parted lips. “For me? Oh, you shouldn’t have, _Doctor._ ” he purred, rolling his R. Harleen briefly wondered if he knew Spanish.

“No, but I did. When was the last time you received a Christmas present?” Harleen asked,  gently placing her hands on top of the box. From the blank look on his face, she knew that it was stupid to even ask. A lot of the questions she asks now are redundant, yet there’s part of her that still hopes that he’ll answer and let her in. “Well, would you like to open it?” The Joker made grabby hands, the same way a toddler would, and Harleen can’t help but smile as she slides the box towards his handcuffed hands. She wished she could take them off, so he could properly open his present, but there was no way she’d be able to get away with that.

His long skinny fingers delicately unwrapped the bow, pulling at one of the ends until it unraveled. He set the bow aside before digging his fingers underneath the tape, peeling it upward slowly so as to minimize the damage done to the paper. Harleen wasn’t sure how she expected the Joker to unwrap the present, but she hadn’t anticipated the level of care and detail that he would put into it. He was normally such an eccentric character when committing crimes, but then again, he was in Arkham, though she doubt that really stopped him from, well, doing whatever he wanted. He raised his eyes at her when all the paper was removed, revealing a little shoebox that Harleen had dug up from the back of her closet. It wasn’t anything name brand, didn’t have any logos or anything on it, just a nondescript cardboard shoebox.

Harleen felt her breath catch in her throat as he lifted off the lid to the shoebox, eyes cast downward to see the contents. The sleeves of the black shirt underneath her tunic were pulled down over her hands, nervously playing with the fabric; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this nervous. Harleen didn’t think she could even feel her heart beating anymore at the Joker tilted the box slightly onto it’s side so that he could reach in as much as the handcuffs would allow. The room was silent, Harleen’s ears ringing quietly, as he shoved the box to the side, present in hand.

Inside the box had been a little stuffed kitten, slightly resembling a Siamese cat. It was a light tan color throughout with dark brown paws, ears, and at the front of the face. It had three white whiskers on each side and two dark brown beady eyes. The Joker, with his head characteristically tilted, shifted the plush between his hands, listening to the slightly sounds the fabric made as it moved, brushing along the stuffing on the inside. Harleen bit her lower lip, not wanting to break the silence, intrigued by her patient’s reaction yet unsure of what he thought; his face had remained pretty blank throughout the whole process. After a few minutes pass in silence, the Joker not taking his eyes off the shifting toy, Harleen speaks up.

“I had a similar looking toy when I was pretty little, I think it was before Holly was born.” The Joker looked up at her then, still quiet, still moving around the body of the kitten. “It kind of reminds me of innocence, though I do remember your opinion on that and how it’s actually just ignorance.” She paused for a second, licking her lips. “But I thought that maybe, whenever you’re holding it, you could try to think back to a more innocent time in your life. Or, well, to a time when things didn’t seem as gray as they do now. Since I know you don’t see the world as black and white.” Harleen was sure that, if he had eyebrows, he would have raised one at her for assuming to know something about him so confidently.

The rest of the session passed rather quietly, Harleen sharing her plans for the holiday while her patient absentmindedly hmm-ed as she spoke. Throughout the rest of the hour, he never stopped running his fingers along the spine of the plush, like you would do with a real feline. She had even said that anything he thinks about while holding the kitten could stay between the two of them, making the toy sort of like an impromptu therapy session, something to bounce ideas off or talk to if he ever really needed to get something off his chest. The orderly, of course, had inspected the toy when the session ended, fingers probing all around the toy, even mentioning that he’d have to cut it open to be sure that it was safe. But Harleen nagged him against that, telling him to inspect the stitching for any irregularities, any signs that it had been opened and re-sewn shut. Yeah, theoretically, Harleen could have hidden a razor blade inside the animal, but she wouldn’t arm one of Gotham’s most dangerous criminals, she wasn’t crazy herself. She also mentioned that there was no way he could suffocate himself or anyone else with it, which he assured the orderly with a very serious expression on his face, shaking his head and denying any sort of violence with the plush. He was still sitting at the desk, chained and waiting to be transported back to his room, as Harleen talked with the orderly. In the end, she gets the guard to agree with her, but advises that she shouldn’t be giving a lot to the Joker. Harleen didn’t reply, but she rolled her eyes, thinking that hired security shouldn’t be telling her how to properly do her job; she went to school for this, she knew what she was doing.

Since she no longer had reason to stay at the asylum, she figured she’d hit the road a little earlier than expected. The airport she was flying out of was under half an hour away and Harleen’s flight wasn’t for another two hours. She always got to airports roughly an hour before her flight was scheduled to leave, even during the holidays, and she always seemed to do just fine getting through security and getting to her designated gate. It wasn’t until Harleen had already pulled on her woolen peacoat and thrown out her now cold beverage that she realized there was something sitting on her desk that hadn’t been there before her session. It was a small box, smaller than the shoebox by far, which Harleen had brought back to her office, ribbon and paper stuffed into it, ready to be tossed onto the floor in the backseat of her car. The box was roughly the size of her hand with her fingers slightly spread out, wrapped crisply in dark purple and green striped wrapping paper. Harleen thought it was a somewhat unusual color combination for Christmas. Perhaps it was from Joan, though they had agreed early on that they didn’t have a need to swap gifts during Christmas or birthdays, though Joan always had a little something up her sleeve for her self-proclaimed prodigy. Tied to a thick orange ribbon was label modeled as a giant toothed smile. She flipped it over to see who her supposed secret Santa was.

_Merry Christmas._

_\- J_

  
Harleen’s jaw dropped. She had locked her office before she left for the session and it had been locked when she came back. Harleen remembered that the Joker had people everywhere, that he hadn’t denied having people working for him inside this very asylum, but how would anyone have been able to get into her office with a present this brightly decorated without anyone saying anything? Her heart pounded in her chest, which was starting to ache slightly, wondering if this was a bomb rigged to explode when she opened it, wondering if it was a booby trap that was going to send nails and other sharp projectiles at her eyes. Harleen had momentarily gotten too comfortable with her patient, how could she have forgotten how dangerous he really was? Harleen chewed on a thumbnail, debating what to do. Should she open it? Should she leave it on her desk and ignore it? Should she just throw it away? Should she give it to security and let them know that the Joker had someone on the inside? She was chewing on her thumbnail, gnashing it between her teeth, when her common sense kicked in. He hadn’t hurt her yet. He’d had opportunities before, especially if he did have someone working inside the asylum, so why wait all this time if he was going to attack her? Though he normally did attack his physicians within the first month, if they even made it that long with him. Though there was nothing normal about the Joker at all. With a deep breath, she untied the orange ribbon, tore the wrapping paper down the middle, and pulled the highly contrasting colors aside to reveal another box. Except this one was light aqua and had a white ribbon, beautifully wrapped into a bow that sat right below the black logo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW. I'M THE WORST. THIS TOOK SO LONG TO GET OUT AND I'M SO SORRY. I WOULD BLAME THANKSGIVING BUT... I can't. 
> 
> polyvore: http://www.polyvore.com/chapter_10/set?id=212537279
> 
> current jams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnGdoEa1tPg; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWpTQM-CCTM  
> (HOW DO YOU LINK THINGS HOW)


	11. XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is dedicated to [strangerthan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/strangerthan/pseuds/strangerthan) for the inspiration for this chapter and for giving me the slight nudge I needed to finish this up; we all know that I'm the worst at updating.  
> addendum: I FIGURED OUT LINKING! FUCK HTML :D HAPPIEST DAY EVER
> 
> ^^^ That was the intro I typed up, oh, back in freaking December? When I thought I was going to post this? A lot has happened in my life since I last updated, and long story short, I took a semester off of college to refocus my mental health, my priorities, and what I find important in life, along with transferring schools while completely changing my major/field of study. I hoped this time would have been conducive to writing more, but I often found myself unmotivated and unfocused (thanks depression) despite having this whole thing outlined. I'm back in school now though, just trying to stay motivated. Thank you to everyone who has understood, who hasn't given up on me, because I'm not giving up on this story. YA HEAR THAT - THIS BITCH AIN'T ABANDONED. It just has a somewhat shitty, confused, and struggling 21-year-old as it's author (ﾉ◠-◠)ﾉ *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Harleen wasn’t entirely sure how she’d gotten herself into this mess. Not that she would necessarily call it a mess, but she was definitely out of her element. When she accepted Joan’s offer to accompany her to the Wayne New Year Benefit Gala, she thought she would just have to follow the older woman around with a smile plastered across her face. She didn’t anticipate having to socialize with countless people, rubbing elbows with benefactors, delving into shrouded political and socioeconomic talk, all while sipping from a flute of the most expensive champagne that Harleen could possibly imagine. Part of her wished that Kara had been able to join her, knowing that the familiar and comforting face of her first, and probably only, friend in Gotham would calm her down and settle the nerves that came with being around Gotham’s elite. But as the night had carried on, she realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach that the Joker had been right.

 

♢♢♢

 

Harleen sat at her desk, staring down at the sandwich she’d made at her apartment the previous night, still slightly chilled from spending the evening in the refrigerator. She’d barely eaten half of the sandwich due to her buzzing nerves from her conversation with Joan that took place about half an hour ago. She had agreed to go to the benefit, “for the good of the funding of the hospital” and “Dr. Arkham is going too, might be good to show that you care about the hospital, not to mention a possible pay raise.” Now that had been the real selling point, because Harleen wouldn’t deny that making her name sparkle in her boss’s eyes wasn’t tempting. She’d graduated college in fairly decent standing, a 3.7 GPA despite her messing around for the majority of her sophomore year, and had polished her résumé with a pretty nice internship during the summers of her junior and senior years. Plus her former boss, Dr. Pierce, who ran the civilian center where she and Kara had met, gave her an absolutely glowing recommendation, going on and on about her amicable attitude, easiness to work with, and outstanding professional conduct with patients and peers alike. Harleen felt like she sleepwalked to her appointment with the Joker, though that probably would have required Harleen feeling any bit rested upon coming back to the present. It was as if she blinked before finding herself seated in front of the Joker, who was being clasped and secured to the chains of the table. He was back in his characteristic straight jacket, tied tight against his body, somehow outlining the breadth of his shoulders, the curve of his waist, the muscle definition of his biceps if she squinted. His hair was falling across his forehead, tips peeking into his line of sight, and Harleen wondered when the last time he styled his hair was. The Joker, for proclaiming that his aim wasn’t for the material things, sure spent a lot of time on his image and notoriety. Which, with further thought, made sense to Harleen; her patient’s name was a feared one and his looks only added to the eccentricities that surrounded him.

His bright green hair, facial tattoos, big and gaudy jewelry, large brooding men acting as his posse, dressing in suits, designer clothes, and the occasional eccentric costume. The thought of the Joker or one of his goons shopping at a designer warehouse made her giggle, she couldn’t picture it. When she thought about it, the way the Joker presented himself was almost as important as the crimes he committed. She wondered if she would be able to get him to discuss this.

“So I hear you’re visiting Bruce Wayne.” Her patient hums with a flick of his tongue across his metal-capped teeth. Harleen felt her eyes widen against her accord.

“How did you hear about that?” She didn’t bother denying it.

“Oh Doctor, you mustn’t be so daft, it really isn’t suiting to play into the part of a dumb blonde.” He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Are you looking forward to dredging amongst the slime and sludge of Gotham?”

“You know, those people would call you the exact same.” Harleen fixed her glasses on the bridge of her nose.

“Those people,” he sneered. “Aren’t as high and mighty as they believe. Are there any real differences between any of us? We’re all just doing our own things, making names for ourselves, running businesses and keeping appearances, schmoozing with the right names. At the end of the day, the do-gooders of Gotham are really just as rotten as us criminals. The only difference with me, and the other supposed scum I work alongside, is that we kill those who irritate, vex, or betray us.”

“Or you just kill them for the adrenaline rush.”

“That too.” Her patient smiled a big, wet, toothy grin.

As she digested the Joker’s words, she realized that multiple grains of truth were embedded in them. What really was the difference between people like the Wayne and Kane families, linked through the marriage of Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane. The high and mighty like Harvey Dent, wanting to purify the city one alleyway at the time through potential political escapades. James Gordon, the beloved police commissioner of the Jersey city, working quietly alongside Batman, though since Harleen had heard murmurings about that, she doubted the secrecy of the arrangement. But where was the line between them and people like the Penguin, the Riddler, Scarecrow, the Joker? Scarecrow. Jonathan Crane, a former Arkham physician who went crazy, gave into the mental grips of the city. Was he the example of what happens to all the good people in the city? They eventually just succumb to the levels of the so-called underworldly foes? But Batman, he works against the police as well; the overall dislike for the caped vigilante, as he was so often referred to, was not kept under wraps. Some civilians looked up to him, he was an icon, a beacon of hope. He was a reflection of the power of the police department and the overall good of the general public to overcome the darker sides of their beloved city. Batman was a light in the darkness with his image of purity and innocence in regards to taking a life. Batman never killed her patient, or any of his foes, despite all the opportunities he’d had to do so. He was still incredibly rough, recalling the state in which the Joker was in when deposited in front of the police station, unconscious. She recalled his cracked ribs, cuts and bruises peppering his face and limbs, the dislocated shoulder that was unceremoniously shifted back into place. Harleen wouldn’t have known it was dislocated in the first place if it hadn’t been for the bruising and discoloration around his shoulder; it had already been relocated before she had seen him. Harleen watched over a lot of her patient’s healing process in Arkham’s medical bay, much to the chagrin of other staff, but Joan had said it would aid in her opinion of the Joker, getting an idea for him and how he works and how he talks before they actually met. He wasn’t at Gotham General was because of how dangerous he was, the hospital not having enough security in case something happened, while also being filled with too many innocent civilians. Harleen had heard enough whispers, and had enough fights with Brandon, stating that the staff of Arkham Asylum were probably just as mad as the patients since they knowingly surrounded themselves with the potential for danger. Not once when she oversaw the Joker’s healing process was he conscious. He always sedated, in somewhat of a medical coma, so their true first words weren’t spoken to one another until their first therapy session. Harleen believed that she only ever saw the Joker sedated so that she wouldn’t get scared off, refuse to treat him once he was ready for psychiatric care after his physical healing; at least that’s what she assumed was Arkham’s thought process. The Joker, to Harleen’s knowledge, had no idea that she even existed, though she had been watching over him while in his vulnerable state. Harleen hadn’t noticed, but she’d been scribbling down the names bouncing through her head on the yellow pad of paper in front of her.

“Penny for your thoughts?” The Joker croaked, his voice somewhat scratchy to her ears, and she shook her head minutely. She looked down at the paper in front of her, some ink from her pen smudged on the side of her index finger. The Joker had leaned forward, eyes obviously downcast at her writing.

“I apologize.” Harleen cleared her throat.

“I had you thinking, didn’t I?” A smirk grew across his pale cheeks. Harleen licked her chapped lips, eyes tracing the curve of his equally pale and thin lips.

“In all honesty,” she paused, took a quick breath through her nose. “You did.” His head cocked to the side with her honesty, smirk growing into a big grin, as if encouraging her to share. “It was an interesting comparison that you made, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued.”

“Good, good,” he hummed. “Alas, too much thinking can be bad though darling, you wouldn’t want to challenge the institution, would you? Or soon you’d be on this side of the table with me and Crane!” He tipped his head back and laughed, a big hearty laugh from his stomach, bouncing off the walls.

It was unlike any laughing fit of the Joker’s that Harleen had witnessed before, as if someone had just shared something unimaginably humorous to him. Her patient was known for his signature laugh, the cackle that would bounce through alleyways and large banquet halls, his sneer meeting his eyes. The Joker boldly laughed in the face of law enforcement, Batman, Gotham city itself, but this felt different than that. This felt more absurd, though Harleen hesitated to use that word to describe it. This laughter, she didn’t even think that he was stopping to breathe as she felt one minute becoming two becoming three. His shoulders hunched against his restraints, his abdomen no doubt tight, which was a thought Harleen didn’t want to entertain for very long. If she squinted, she thought she was the beginning of a tear leaking out from the corner of his right eye, but if there was one, it never actually fell down his cheek. Harleen was sure this had to have been an act, surely what he had said didn’t actually amuse him this greatly to cause such a reaction. This whole act, however, felt too real, too personal, as if whatever shroud that Harleen had been tugging at with her notes and tri-weekly sessions, with her warming up to the human side of her patient. It was as if this distinct laughter, mystifying and theatrical yet thrilling and encompassing, all-consuming, had permeated through her skin. It felt like Harleen’s ribs were rattling with the sound, as if the high pitched decibel itself could threaten to snap each one in half; he would probably use them as drumsticks, which made Harleen wonder if he’d ever done such a thing as macabre. It felt like the breath in her lungs were sucked into his with every inhale drawn to continue his shrieking laughter. She looked down at her lap, her hand white knuckled around her pen, which was beginning to dig into her palm, a dark red, almost purple line diagonally through her right hand. Why was her heart pulsing inside her chest, anxiety pooling at the bottom of her stomach? A different noise brought her head back up. Two orderlies Harleen didn’t recognize, broad men with large torsos and forgettable faces, were walking into the room, wheelchair creaking towards her patient. She thought she saw a third person standing with their arms crossed from the hallway but she wasn’t entirely sure; Joan had been giving Harleen her space with her sessions when the Joker hadn’t physically harmed her in any one of the early sessions. Harleen wasn’t necessarily a rookie with her patient anymore and she knew how to handle herself in his presence. Or, well, she thought she did; she knew that she gave off that she was clearly intimidated throughout this session. She checked her watched and saw that they still had over half of their session left to continue.

“And just what do you two think you’re doing?” She asked when they prepared to wheel the Joker back to his room. “This is a breach of his privacy as a patient. HIPAA is still applicable to criminals. Who told you to come in here?”

“He’s clearly having a manic session.” One orderly grunted and it was then that she noticed the thin needle in his hand. Joker, still entranced in his squealing laughter, either saw it and paid no mind or was too caught up in his frenzy of hilarity, because he didn’t fight the injection at all. The tranquilizer, Harleen had a gut feeling that it wasn’t the one she and the nursing staff had discussed using, worked quickly, and the Joker’s body slumped forward, straps from the wheelchair keeping his body upright. Harleen ran forward but the other orderly put his large hands on her upper arms.

“That’s my patient! I didn’t authorize that!” She shouted.

“This came from above you.”

And with that, she was left alone in her treatment room, one orderly pushing the Joker’s wheelchair while the other walked in front of him, sort of like a personal guard detail. Harleen wanted to grab her hair and scream, but instead she just balled her fists until her nails were digging little crescents into her palms to ground her. She stormed, quite literally, to Joan’s office and knocked rapidly on her door. She was shaking her leg impatiently when Joan opened the door for her and ushered her inside before Harleen could even open her mouth. Joan locked her door behind her.

“I know you’re upset, but just listen before you start speaking.” Joan’s hands were cupped lightly on Harleen’s shoulders and she was talking in a motherly voice. Harleen took a deep breath through her nose before nodding. “This came from above me too, Harleen. I don’t know who was watching your session, I don’t anymore because you’ve proved yourself capable of working with the Joker. The only person who I know overseeing that room was the security guard, what’s his name, who constantly watches the cameras throughout the asylum. Frankly, I believe that area is understaffed, but that’s apparently above my pay grade as well.”

“I don’t get it Joan, no one can approve a sedative for him but me.” Harleen complained. 

“I know sweetie,” a pet name that Joan had started calling Harleen. “And trust me when I say that I’m going to figure this out. Not that I don’t think you can, but I have more pull here than you do. I hate pulling the seniority card, but I unfortunately have no choice but to do so here. There are so many doctors and physicians here Harleen, any one of the incarcerated or civilian doctors could’ve made this call if they feared for your safety.”

“He was only laughing!” Joan squeezed Harleen’s shoulders gently, a reminder for the young blonde to keep her cool.

“I know, but that could have spooked one of the doctors; he’s a psychotic clown who finds pleasure and amusement in horror and psychotic behavior, perhaps someone thought he was preparing to attack you. I’ll figure this out Harleen, I assure you. Now, why don’t you take an early day, you can wait to enter your notes until Monday, no one’s going to be looking through them right now. Everyone is going to be preoccupied with running some tests on him throughout the weekend to make sure this wasn’t some odd reaction to something we’re prescribing him while he’s here. Just take a few deep breaths, this is going to be figured out and the appropriate parties will be dealt with.” Part of her wanted to argue with Joan, that she was as big a part of the Joker’s treatment team than anyone else at the asylum. But being the youngest, albeit still experienced, of the group, she opted to just hold her tongue. “I’ll see you tomorrow night Harleen.” Joan said in parting with a smile on her face. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Mr. Wayne offers car service to and from the venue, should I set that up for you?” Harleen nodded, thanked Joan, closed the door behind her and gathered her things from her office.

She threw out her sandwich from earlier, switched her lab coat for a heavy woolen coat and walked out to her car. There were dark clouds in the sky, reminiscent of the rain from earlier in the morning, some droplets still resting on the hood of her car. Harleen had been so excited when she had purchased the two-door white Scion, a few years behind the current model being advertised. A small weight left her shoulders when she’d accepted the contact information from Joan for the car service; at least she wasn’t going to be driving up while everyone else arrived in limos and Bentleys no doubt. Harleen knew that she was going to stick out at the event, best not to make it worse for herself. The front bumper had a few scratches on it from times when she had been too careless when pulling into parking spaces, but she liked to think that it added character to her car. She tried to trick herself into thinking that a slightly dinged up car would have a lesser chance of being stolen, but anything could happen in Gotham. It wasn’t like her apartment was in a bad part of town necessarily, she had quiet enough neighbors and a decent enough man acting as property manager.

All-in-all, Harleen considered herself pretty fortunate for a twenty-seven year old woman, who spent almost two years in civilian therapy and now two years at Arkham solidifying her career, which really cemented itself with the beginning of her treatment of the Joker. She felt proud of how she’d been handling herself in Gotham for the past five years, how the world didn’t collapse beneath her feet when her relationship with Brandon ended, how she integrated herself into Arkham as well as she did. Randomly, Harleen would find herself overcome with feelings of empowerment, as if she had the whole world at her fingertips, but then days like today would come and bring her back down to normalcy. Harleen had absolutely no control over what had occurred today. She hadn’t authorized anything that had happened and it made her feel as if she was back at the bottom of the Arkham totem pole. Harleen hated having no sway, no power, no influence. She felt as helpless as she did when she was a child, right after her younger brother had been born, and again with her sister. Her younger self sat on her ass, despising her parents internally with all the rage an elementary school girl could muster. She had been frustrated that she had to care for her infantile siblings more than her parents combined. She hated lying to her teacher saying that her parents weren’t very good at the current subject matter when instead they couldn’t care less, too drunk or high to function, or simply shooing her away to her room when asked to help with her homework. It wasn’t until she was in middle school that her weekend trips to Metropolis started, so that she could fund her gymnastics lessons through the pickpocketing and donations from strangers, so that she could afford to buy the cute clothes that the other girls would wear. The day she moved into her aunt’s house couldn’t have come soon enough, but Harleen had been angered at her weakness, her inability to function on her own, forced to be so dependant on someone else for survival. She hadn’t been able to count on her biological parents for the majority of her life, and when she finally got accepted to college, she promised herself that she would never depend on anyone in that fashion ever again. The Joker’s laughter echoed in her ears as she drove home, cleaned her apartment, and ate a mediocre dinner of leftovers from the night before because she honestly had no motivation to make anything new. His sharp intakes of breath rattled her eardrums as she washed her hair, some suds from her body wash lingering on her body as the lather ran down the drain. The haunting sound of the belts tightening and locking around his body distracted her from the book she tried to read in bed. When she tried to watch something on television, she didn’t hear the actors but instead the creaking wheels that took him away. Harleen rubbed at her eyes, frustrated, before gulping down the remaining half of the water bottle that she had placed on her nightstand. At an hour before midnight, she placed her glasses into their case before flicking off the table lamp, accepting that she wasn’t going to sleep very well that night.

 

♢♢♢

 

Harleen woke hours after sunrise, light shining in slanted rays through her bedroom blinds. She liked the layout of her apartment, the way it resembled a studio-styled rental even though it wasn’t classified as one. The bedroom had exposed brick on the wall with the window, old and charming and Harleen loved the character that it added. It was the only exterior facing wall in her apartment and it faced out towards an alleyway that was scarce except a few random cardboard boxes, that always seemed to be replaced when taken away, and a long forgotten metal folding chair. Harleen couldn’t imagine anyone that would voluntarily want to sit around that alleyway. When she checked her discarded watch on her bedside table, she realized that it was already half past eleven in the morning, way later than she usually let herself sleep. She recalled the time she spent tossing and turning in her bed for what felt like hours. She had woken up multiple times, sighing and rolling over every time she regained consciousness. Of course she wasn’t going to be well-rested for the Gala tonight.

Harleen wasn’t particularly looking forward to the event, at no surprise to her. She had unenthusiastically accepted, or listened to, Joan’s request for her presence at the Gala. When she agreed to go, she hadn’t thought much about what she was going to wear, knowing she had a handful of long, formal and appropriate dresses stashed away in her closet. Okay, she had two, and one of them was her senior prom dress that she’d held onto throughout the years because the dress had become somewhat sentimental to her. She had purchased the powder blue dress weeks after spotting it in a store at the local mall and subsequently working every hour that she could at the rinky-dink pizza parlor, two blocks from the high school, that was a popular hangout spot for fellow teenagers. Harleen wasn’t sure why she kept the dress after all this time, but there was some part of her that just couldn’t bear to let it go; however, the idea of wearing it out tonight made her skin crawl. She doubted she even still fit in it despite having a similar physique from when she was an active gymnast. She was very thankful for her metabolism. She migrated to her kitchen, wearing a large tee-shirt that she’d appropriated from her college days and a pair of lightweight athletic shorts. Her hair was piled up into a bun on the top of her head; Harleen wasn’t a fan of sleeping with her hair down, the way it could wrap around her neck. She convinced herself that it had nothing to do with the handful of times she’d been pulled around the house when she was a child, shivering at the phantom touch of rough calloused hands shaking her, pulling her out of her bed, slapping her.

Harleen made herself a cup of coffee, adding her usual splash of creamer and spoonful of sugar. She had no doubts that she was going to need the coffee to get herself through the day after the restless night she had. By the time half the cup was ingested, Harleen had come to terms with her evening plans, deciding that going to the Gala with Joan wasn’t going to be the worst thing afterall. She was showing her support of her workplace and getting her name out there, making herself more recognized amongst the people of Gotham. She doubted she’d see any of her former patients from when she was a civilian therapist - the rich and elite of Gotham didn’t need therapist, their money solved all their problems before they even arose. Or they hired out-of-towners with fancier degrees from Ivy League schools. Bitterly, she brought her mug back to her mouth when a knock sounded on her door, three hard raps in quick succession. Her eyebrows drew together against her own accord; she hadn’t been expecting anybody and mail gets delivered to her little metal mailbox on the first floor along with the other tenants of the apartment complex. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, chewing on it momentarily before the three knocks were repeated. She sighed, placing her coffee down on the counter, and tugged on the bottom of her shirt, hoping that she looked somewhat decent and not like she had just rolled out of bed.

Upon opening the door, she saw a trim man standing in front of her with light hair buzzed close to his head. He had sunken eyes, a dark murky color, and was wearing a pair of equally dark jeans that were faded at the knees and pockets. He wore an unbuttoned red and black checkered, but not plaid Harleen noticed, with a black tee-shirt underneath. She quickly glanced down to see a chain hanging out of his left front pocket and a pair of matte black hightops on his feet - were those Air Jordans?

“Miss Quinzel?” His voice brought her eyes back up to his. As she was fixing her gaze was when she first noticed the cardboard box that was held at his side. She didn’t remember ordering anything recently, and even if she had, it would’ve been dropped off to the receptionist on the first floor. Okay, receptionist wasn’t the right term to describe the landlord’s wife who spent the majority of her day talking on her phone with her friends while reading gossip magazines and watching daytime television. “Harley Quinzel?”

“Oh, yes, sorry, how can I help you?” She shook her head slightly to bring herself back to the present moment.

“This is for you.” He said curtly, shoving her the decently large sized box that had been tucked away at his side. Her mouth opened and closed a few times as she took the package, but before she could say anything, the mysterious courier had turned around, one hand in his pocket, the other pulling out his phone. Harleen could barely hear music coming from headphones he must’ve had that she hadn’t noticed. Sighing, she retreated back into her apartment and locked her door behind her before walking back to the kitchenette area. She placed the package a few feet away from her coffee mug and stared at it, one arm crossed along her waist, the other rubbing the back of her neck. Biting at a piece of skin on her lip, she noticed there was neither a sender’s nor recipient’s address; in fact, the box was completely devoid of any markings whatsoever that would have indicated who or where it came from. She ran her hands down her face, threw back the remainder of her tepid coffee, and cracked her knuckles as her curiosity got the best of her. She grabbed a pair of scissors that sat in a mostly empty drawer and took the box to her room where she set it on her unkempt bed, one pillow having fallen to the floor in her restless tossing.

The first thing she noticed when she opened the box was a card, the back of which was sealed with a wax stamp that shimmered dark gold in the sunlight coming through her window. Harleen had to squint to see what was embossed in the wax and couldn’t stop her gasp, and the concurrent hand flying to her mouth, when she identified a jester hat and cowl staring back at her. Her pale fingers trembled as she opened the envelope, the sound of it peeling away from the wax startlingly loud against her shallow breaths. She pulled out a crisp white card with a gold border, roughly the same color as the wax and just as shimmery, about half an inch away from the edge of the card. Smack in the middle was a matching gold jester hat and cowl, a replica of what was stamped in said wax. Her heart was pounding in her chest, she could feel her pulse in her fingertips, in her stomach, in the tips of her toes, as she opened the card. Dark ink contrasted against the crisp brightness of the card.

_Just a little something for the Good Doctor. Enjoy your evening._

_\- J_

Harleen found herself breathless, staring unblinking at the somewhat familiar cursive in front of her. Card clutched tight in her hand, she quickly walked to the coffee table in front of her beat up couch, where the Christmas gift and accompanying card supposedly from her patient had sat, untouched, since she came back to Gotham from Massachusetts the day after Christmas. She now held one card in each hand, eyes darting back and forth between the two, comparing the tilt of the T’s, the flick of the dots above the I’s, and the one letter identifying who was the sender, which Harleen doubted. The Joker had absolutely no way to get stationary, personalized at that, let alone a pen to even write with. The man wasn’t even allowed eating utensils, there was no way he could’ve had access to these materials. Part of her wanted to believe that this was some sort of prank, but the other half thought that the very idea of said prank was disturbing and slightly terrifying. Who would even want to pretend to be The Joker in the first place? Not like they would even get away with trying - her patient was one of a kind, impossible to recreate. The possibility that these two gifts truly came from the Joker was almost as terrifying as someone trying to impersonate him.

Dropping both of the cards, Harleen jogged back to her bedroom, eyes wide on the box laying on the bed. There was nothing special about the other occupant of her package, a large white box resembling one that might come from a department store yet without any distinguishable markings. She briefly entertained the thought that there was some sort of explosive device inside the box but she didn’t hear any ticking and there wasn’t any radiating heat coming from it. As if she was some kind of explosives expert. With a deep breath originating from the bottom of her lungs, she lifted the white box while nudging the larger cardboard box out of the way with the back of her hand. She shook the box slightly, hearing soft rustling inside; the contents were considerably lightweight, not heavy enough to be any sort of explosive that she knew of. She flicked the lid off the box while setting it back down on her bed and was surprised to see stark white tissue paper pouring over the confines of their packaging. Harleen bit her lip and furrowed her eyebrows while slowly pulling out one sheet at a time, each one seeming to make more noise than the last as her heart pounded harder and harder in her chest.

The deepest shade of red peered up at Harleen, a beautiful blend of burgundy and black twisting over one another. She couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping as she gingerly lifted the dress out of the box. It was floor length, fabric tumbling towards the floor without flaring out too greatly. The bodice was tightly woven to accentuate her waist and chest, but not so much that Harleen believed it would feel constricting. Thick bands, that she assumed wrapped around the neck in a halter-style, were covered in large gemstones so sparkling that Harleen had to blink away the very idea of them being real diamonds. There was a hidden zipper, perfectly matching the burgundy of the dress, going up the back of the dress from hip level to the top of the backside of the dress. The fabric looked like taffeta but the matching burgundy slip underneath felt like silk. Harleen picked up the card once again, reading the message telling her to enjoy her evening. Then it dawned on her. Had the Joker sent her a dress to wear specifically for the gala? But how would he have even arranged something like this in the first place? They’d only briefly talked about it yesterday during their session, and he was anesthetized directly after, which would’ve lasted well into the evening hours, so how would he have had the time to set this up? She had only decided to go about twenty four hours ago.

Harleen draped the dress across her bed before tugging her hair out of the bun on top of her head. She ran her fingers through scattered knots and tangles as she walked to her bathroom and turned on the shower. She spent ample time shaving, washing, and scrubbing while hot water pounded against her shoulders. Steam filled the small bathroom, a shallow puddle formed near the drain of the tub by the time she was done. Music was playing from where her phone was perched on the porcelain sink. She hummed along as she toweled off her hair and body, brushing through her blonde locks leisurely with the towel wrapped back around her.

An hour and a half later, Harleen was moisturized, hair fairly dried and curled, a faux diamond stud placed in each lobe, and had finished her makeup with the last swipe of her lipstick. Part of her knew why she had decided to go with a dark red lip and subtle smokey eye while the other part furiously denied. Towel clutched to her body still, she returned to her bedroom, trying her hardest not to bite her lip while she paced in front of the dress glaring up at her. She couldn’t possibly wear it, that would be completely inappropriate. And what if it was actually some test from someone to see how close she’d gotten to her patient? And that they’d sent the dress because she hadn’t reacted publicly to the Christmas gift? But what if they actually were from the Joker and he found out that she hadn’t worn the dress, let alone even opened the other gift? What if that made him mad and all of a sudden, instead of being on his good side, he changed her into a target and had someone kill her while he was still incarcerated? Harleen didn’t doubt that her patient had that kind of power, even while residing in Arkham under constant security; hadn’t he said that he had eyes and ears everywhere? With a heavy sigh, Harleen laid her now barely damp towel next to the dress. She should at least try it on, right?

After putting on a black strapless bra and matching panties, Harleen slowly shimmied into the dress, the silky slip gliding smoothly along her skin as she pulled it on. The dress fit like a dream, wouldn’t be too long once she put on some heels, and fit snug around her waist and chest. She probably didn’t even need her bra but she wasn’t that daring. She twisted around to pull up the zipper before clasping the halter behind her neck. Harleen smoothed down the dress and some invisible wrinkles before stepping in front of the small full length mirror in the corner of the bedroom. Her small intake of breath was hardly audible as she scanned her reflection. The dark shades were stark against the light tint of her skin, enough to make her stand out but not become swallowed. Her lipstick was a perfect choice, hair flowing towards the middle of her back, brushing against the back of the dress. Harleen couldn’t have imagined a dress that fit her as flawlessly as this one did, as if it was made for only her body, which was an absurd thought.

Harleen busied her remaining time before the car arrived to straighten up her room and clean the coffee mug she’d used earlier. She was thankful that dinner was being served because she’d completely forgone eating. Her curiosity had remained peaked since she’d opened her surprise parcel earlier; if this magnificent dress was just a random gift from the Joker, then what was sitting on her coffee table? She knew it was from Tiffany’s, she could recognize that aqua blue box from a mile away, but why would he have bought her jewelry? Brandon was the only man who’d ever bought her anything as expensive as jewelry. Harleen didn’t indulge herself much with diamonds and gold, she didn’t have much need for them, and she didn’t want to tempt any potential robbers. She gingerly untied the still crisp white ribbon and set it down next to her before taking off the lid of the box. Harleen’s hand flew to her mouth.

She had never seen so many diamonds in her life. The bracelet was made of what Harleen assumed was either silver or platinum, which competitively sparkled as a backdrop for the numerous diamonds circling it. The bangle looked like swirls or vines, reminiscent of an S shape, with a row of diamonds on the top and bottom to encase the design. It was easily the most beautiful and expensive object Harleen ever had in her possession. Her phone buzzed, the arrival message from her chauffeur, as she clasped the bracelet around her right wrist. She quickly slipped on a pair of closed-toe black heels before grabbing a small black clutch she’d found on the shelf of her closet. There seriously had to be someone looking out for her because everything felt like it was all according to plan. She double checked that she had her apartment key, phone, and lipstick before locking the door behind her.

 

♢♢♢

 

It was nearing eleven at night and Harleen had her third glass of champagne in her hand, which was mostly full. She was grateful for the very slight buzz helping her throughout the evening. Joan had been sitting at one of the many white clothed tables with matching ornate chairs, each table topped with a large glass vase of long stemmed roses and large purple flowers that Harleen didn’t recognize. Her co-worker was wearing a knee length silver dress, originally paired with a matching jacket that was now draped across the back of the chair she was sitting in. Harleen personally didn’t think she would be caught dead in the outfit Joan was wearing, but the older woman surprisingly pulled off the slightly curve-hugging dress well enough. Joan had all but gushed over Harleen’s dress for the evening, causing her heart to pound against her chest so hard that she thought she could feel her sternum shaking with each beat.

Harleen really did feel beautiful though, in the floor length gown that her patient had gifted her. She’d notice many men and women staring in her direction when she entered, as well as when she’d danced with Mr. Arkham before dinner had been served. She honestly felt like she captivated the attention of the room, and she lavished in the warming sensation of knowing all eyes were on her. Or they were until the biggest guest of the evening had arrived hours ago. Who was now walking in her direction.

“Good evening Dr. Quinzel, you look incredible.” Bruce Wayne greeted, extending a smooth hand out towards her. She smiled tightly before thinking to look down slightly to seem flattered. She’d heard many things about the billionaire businessman throughout her years residing in Gotham, which is why she didn’t quickly regard the woman who was clasped around his arm. But when she looked, Harleen swore she was staring at a fine piece of art.

The woman had beautiful skin, which she didn’t hesitate showing off in her long black evening gown. From head to toe, she was a beautiful color that Harleen had trouble naming at first. Mahogany? A molasses cookie rolled in delectable brown sugar? Or was she closer to a slightly overcooked toffee or caramel color? Whatever Harleen would later decide didn’t matter because the woman had smooth, flawless skin except for some dark freckles on her high cheekbones and collarbones. The dress she wore hugged every twist and curve of her body, accentuating her waist and pear-shaped hips; she was nothing short of voluptuous. She had one toned arm linked with Bruce, the nicely manicured hand of the other draped on his forearm. When she spoke, her voice dripped out of her mouth like honey, hinting at a former thick southern accent.

“I’m Selina Kyle, pleased to meet you.” Her slightly tinted lips parted to show beautiful white teeth that could’ve guided a ship to shore in the dead of night.

“Doctor Harleen Quinzel,” a second passed. “The pleasure is all mine.”

“I’ve heard your name multiple times tonight, you must be pretty important.” Selina grinned.

“Doctor Quinzel is a physician at Arkham Asylum.” Bruce looked towards his date slightly. “She’s shown promising work in her career up to this point and she’s currently working with a very high stakes patient.”

“Oh, is that so?” Selina’s eyes lit up at the connotation of Harleen’s importance. “Do you feel you are making progress?”

“Well, progress is an interesting word choice. I’ve never really had a, as you say Bruce, high stakes patient before. I mean, sure he has a reputation around his name, but I treat him just like I would any other patient in the hospital.” Harleen explained before turning to Bruce. “Though for the local reputation surrounding his name, I’m surprised that you knew because I didn’t think that was common knowledge.”

“I make many beneficious donations to the hospital annually and I like to know where that money is being spent.” Bruce nodded tightly. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, ladies.” He kissed Selina’s hand before walking somewhere behind Harleen.

“So, Selina, what do you do?” Harleen asked, clasping her hands in front of her.

“I work in finance, actually.” Selina started before directing her attention to one of the passing trays of champagne flutes. She took two before thanking him, handing one to Harleen, who gave him a smile in thanks. “I work in various departments around the financial district and downtown. I don’t necessarily have an office or home base, other than my apartment of course, so the majority of my work gets done on site.”

“What made you choose finance?” Harleen asked with a sip of her drink. She saw Selina take a large sip herself before continuing.

“To be honest with you, I had a difficult upbringing. Long story short, I found out that a place I thought could be safe and correct was actually embezzling. So I guess you could say that I became interested in financial well-being at a young age. So now I do a lot of bookkeeping, make sure everything's adding up correctly, being aware of fraud, Ponzi schemes, the like. I commonly find myself taking my work home with me actually.”

“Boy, do I understand that.” Harleen sighed, closing her eyes momentarily.

“Is your patient really that difficult?”

“You don’t know the half of it.” Harleen sighed, rubbing one of her temples briefly. “He’s notorious for his lack of care towards the general public, has raging narcissism, frequent obsessive tendencies, and is as slippery as an eel when it comes to staying in protective custody. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s been in Arkham for as long as he has. I’ve been treating him for a couple months now.”

“Well, maybe there’s a difference, maybe there’s a reason he’s still in the hospital. Have you ever thought about that?”

“What do you mean?” Selina just smirked at her before downing the rest of the champagne, As she walked past Harleen, she placed a hand on her arm, which felt both warm and chilling to the touch, causing goosebumps to sprout along Harleen’s arms. She leaned in, her lips ghosting along the shell of her ear. “Not everything is what it seems, Harleen. Keep those big blue eyes of yours open.”

Harleen stood speechless as the other woman sashayed away, disappearing into the mingling crowd of Gotham’s elite. Her eyes scanning over all the people, recognizing none of them, Harleen thought back to what her patient had said. Was anyone really as innocent as they say? Selena said she looked out for crooked businessmen, stealing or laundering money for nefarious reasons. And of course, there’s always the fear of a crooked cop somewhere, though Harleen hadn’t heard of one being caught in years. Police Commissioner Gordon proudly boasted his success rates amongst his staff. Endless assortments of gowns and suits, what were they hiding under their beds at home? Who slept with a gun on the night table? Who gambled away their old family money in a sleazy casino under an alias? Who slept with the same prostitute on the third Thursday of every month while his wife was at book club? Was everyone in Gotham really rotten like Joker had said?

Was she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Harleen's Dress](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c8/35/9f/c8359f10c589ebf78abf009abcf7247e.jpg)  
> [Christmas Gift from Joker](http://www.tiffany.com/explore/anniversary-gifts/tiffany-enchant-scroll-bangle-28906005?&fromGrid=1&search_params=p+1-n+10000-c+287458-s+5-r+101323351%2B101323338%2B101323341%2B101323340-t+-ni+1-x+-lr+0-hr+-ri+-mi+-pp+1485+8&search=0&origin=browse&searchkeyword=&trackpdp=bg&fromcid=287458&trackgridpos=29) (yes I have an account on tiffany's just to save beautiful jewelry that I CAN'T HAVE BECAUSE I'M A MASOCHIST)  
> [Selina's Dress](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ee/92/cf/ee92cf2ea978593905e061a02c61ed01--black-prom-dresses-mermaid-prom-dresses.jpg)  
> [Joan's Dress](http://www.ingownsdress.com/Public/Uploads/Products/20111226/Sweetheart%20V%20Back%20Satin%20Silver%20Brooch%20Short%20Mother%20Of%20Bride%20Dresses%202012%20With%20Jacket.jpg)
> 
> my image of Bruce somewhat matches how he was depicted in Batman: the Telltale series, absolutely nothing from Christian Bale, and maybe the cleft in Ben Afleck's chin. 
> 
> happy holidays & have a lovely, fun, safe new year! I'll see you all in 2017 xo
> 
> i jUST LOVE GIVING VISUALS OK
> 
> (keeping what I had originally planned to say back in December - hope y'all all had safe/fun holiday season! I've spent this semester off school working on myself mentally and emotionally and wanted to give this story the attention it deserved. hopefully the length makes up for some of the hatred towards taking about half a year to update? I adore you all so much)  
> ALSO: MY TWIN BOUGHT ME A DADDY'S LIL MONSTER SHIRT FOR OUR BDAY
> 
> 8/21 - I TOOK A LOT OF LIBERTY WITH SELINA SRRY SHE ENDED UP DIFF THAN MY ORIGINAL IDEA BUT DAMN SHE FINE I'M LOVING THIS SEL


	12. Chapter XII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone had a nice Halloween! and look at that, a relatively short wait between updates! this is just a short little filler chapter, but I hope you enjoy regardless! xo

“I’m so proud of you Harls!” Kara says with her megawatt smile. Harleen’s smile is shy in comparison. “You’re going to have such a great year, I can feel it! You’re going places!” 

“If you say so Kara,” Harleen chuckles before taking a sip of champagne. 

The television in Kara’s apartment is on in the background, with newscasters and millions of people parading around New York City, waiting for the ball to drop and signal the start of another year. Harleen gets the excitement, but New Year’s Eve and all the celebrating lost it’s appeal when she was young. Every year, she would hope with all her heart that the next year would be different, things would change, her parents would get better, but all it did was crash her spirits to the ground. So she learned not to become blissfully hopeful because in the end, the only one who would end up getting hurt was herself. Was it a bit dismal and cynical? Sure, but at least she remained realistic. 

 

♢♢♢

 

“Did you make any resolutions for the New Year, Joker?” 

“I did, indeed I did.” He replies, which makes Harleen raise her head from the paper she was scribbling. She’d been taking some light notes, nothing too detailed, since her sessions with the Joker seemed to have slowed to a certain extent. It made it somewhat difficult for her to flesh out her reports, but part of her didn’t mind. The other part of her believed that even sitting in the same room as her patient and being able to leave afterward without a scratch was huge progress in itself. Harleen wasn’t oblivious to the quiet whispers and quick glances when she would pass by other doctors; no one else has ever lasted this long with the Joker nor has he ever really stayed in Arkham for such a long period of time without even attempting escape. But when he attempts, he succeeds, that was something Harleen was sure of. 

What had her confused, for a moment, was that the Joker seemed to play into the idea of novelty. The Joker definitely was a man of novelty in the sense that there was no one else like him on the planet; he was one of a kind, irreplaceable, unrepeatable. He was physically, emotionally, and spiritually on a completely different level than the majority of the world. Hell, he was on a level all his own. 

“Would you mind sharing?” Harleen asked, biting the inside of her mouth, trying not to shake her leg anxiously. She felt nervous that she was being played, that the Joker was just toying with her now, indulging in pointless conversation until something better came along. But then she remembered how long he’s remained under her supervision, without much incident, and her nerves began to lesson. 

“Of course I don’t mind,” He grinned, his capped teeth glinting in the artificial light. “This year, I intend to get to the punchline of my newest joke.” 

Harleen knew this word from multiple previous sessions, recalling notes about hope and failure, using people as a means to an end. 

“If I recall correctly, your current joke has something to do with hope?”

“Little Harleen, that was my example for you, do you have trouble keeping your memories straight? Maybe we should switch sides for once, you know, like a little experiment. How about I ask  _ you _ the questions this time?”

“You’ve tried this before Joker, and again I reiterate that these sessions are for your benefit, to talk about your life, what makes you do the things that you do. You were pronounced criminally insane and sent here instead of Blackgate or some other high security prison, so let’s make use of the time we have.” Harleen tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Yes Doctor, how professional of you.” The Joker grinned a wet smile, saliva dragging across his teeth as his skin wrinkled. “Though, where really is the line of your professionalism?”

The Joker mimicked the tilt of her head, reflecting her confusion in the shine of his teeth, before snapping to a different topic without warning. 

“So I had that good old Downtown is finally clean again, correct?” 

“Yes, that’s true, I heard that on the radio during my drive over.”

“And to think, that it all could have been avoided.” He trailed off.

“Avoided how? What do you know?” Harleen paused when silence greeted her. “I recall asking you about that evening after it happened and subsequent denial of any useful knowledge,”

“Now I didn’t say that I didn’t have anything knowledgeable about the events that took place.” Her patient cut her off. “Don’t put words into my mouth, little girl, there’s trouble down the path.”

“Well, if you’d be so kind, would you be willing to share what you know?” 

“Why, I know the motive.”

Harleen felt her palms start sweating. She hadn’t intended for her session to go this way, she honestly didn’t think much of the completed repairs in Downtown airing over the morning radio talk shows she scanned through. She hadn’t heard a word from any police figures after handing over her notes from the session that November morning with an apology about her lack of evidence or information. The Joker stays in solitary confinement and has limited interaction with only herself and the guards that take him to and from his cell to their therapy room. He isn’t allowed to talk to other inmates or patients and no other doctors pay him any mind, which Harleen guessed might frustrate him sometimes; her patient isn’t someone who is used to being ignored. Do rumors and secrets really run through the walls of the hospital like she hears murmurs about in the doctor’s lounge? Which she stopped frequenting after enough sideways glances and muttered comments about her methods of treatment, how she only kept her patient in line by sexually pleasing him. The first time she heard that, she had run all the way to Joan’s office, mascara running down her red cheeks, who consoled her like her mother never did. 

“How did you come across this information?” Harleen’s pen felt slippery between her fingers.

“Because it was simple, overused, definitely amateur. It’s obvious, when you have the right cognisance to understand the actions that happened.” He paused, watched Harleen’s tongue dart out quickly to lick her lips, before continuing. “Revenge, Harleen. Someone did something upsetting, incorrect, improper,  _ wrong _ , and they needed to be punished. Which they were, rightfully so, albeit indirectly.” 

“How do you know all this?” Harleen’s pen was dragging across her notepad, looking something like a drunk cursive, the ballpoint of her pen sliding between one word and another. 

“Because you’re the one that was punished.” 

Harleen’s lungs stopped, her breath and voice caught in her throat, her pen scribbling herself down momentarily without processing. She blinked once, twice, multiple times while breathing shallowly through her parted lips. Did he actually just say that Halloween’s vandalism, Esquire’s explosion, the victims of said explosion, were her fault?

“I see those cogs turning in your head Harleen, good.” His vowels dragged out over a couple long seconds. “Process, realize, think about what you could have done. Analyze all your mistakes, knitpick through everything you do, every action you perform, every word that you let leave that pretty little mouth of yours, until you’re mad, just like me.” A low chuckle vibrated low in his throat. There was something different about the look in his eyes, but Harleen dismissed it, or just didn’t notice it due to the supposed revelations she was having. 

What could she have possibly done to upset anyone? It’s not like she knew any criminals or anything, besides the one sitting across the table from her. Sure, there were some doctors that would have given an arm and a leg for the position to interview the Joker, but there were also those who weren’t envious of her dangerous and controversial position. She didn’t cross paths with anyone that she normally didn’t, in fact she rarely saw Kara other than the holiday festivities that had been recently concluded. Harleen didn’t do anything wrong, she always paid her bills on time, didn’t even have a speeding ticket or a warning to her name; she’d changed from the girl that she was in high school and college. She did what she needed to in order to expunge her charges, she graduated college with honors, she worked hard throughout getting her PhD, worked diligently and respectfully with her patients at the civilian therapy center in Midtown; Harleen was a good person, she cared for others, worked hard, learned to keep her nose down in her books and studies, and kept out of any business she didn’t want to be involved in. So what had happened?

“Did you know that jealousy is rooted in insecurity and lack of confidence? Of course, being the man that I am, I would never harbor feelings of jealousy, that’s below me; however, I am not one that likes to share what’s mine.” The Joker interjected. 

How does that relate to me?” Harleen’s teeth threatened to click as she spoke. Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she even wanted the answer. 

“You’re  _ mine _ , darling.”

“I’m your doctor, Joker.”

“Oh no,” he grinned, looking downwards. “It’s passed that.” 

Harleen followed his gaze before stopping on the slight glimmer peeking out from the cuff of her labcoat. She quickly flicked her wrist back, shifting the bracelet back underneath the length of her sleeve. Her mouth opens and closes, unable to form words, unable to make a sound leave her throat beside the shallow sound of air passing through her chapped lips. She knew it was a risk wearing the bracelet to work today, but she hadn’t wanted to take it off. Harleen had never owned something so beautiful in her entire life and feared that taking it off would make it disappear. That she would return home from work and the bracelet would no longer be in her small jewelry box, the dress would have vanished from her closet, and any proof of the Gala and her supposed gifts would become nothing more than glittering memories. Besides, she kept reminding herself that there was no proof that these gifts were even from her patient, it could have just as well been someone just wanting to play a trick on her. WHy she wore them, then, she wasn’t entirely sure - honestly, she probably just should have ignored the items, but her curiosity got the best of her.

“I hope the measurements for the dress were correct, I didn’t necessarily have access to a tape measure.” 

And just like that, her heart spiraled down and crashed into the soles of her feet. Was he just stringing her along? Did he really comission to have a dress made for her, solely for this event? But Harleen wasn’t going to let him get to her, at least she wouldn’t let him see that he did. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Harleen cleared her throat while stacking her papers and collecting them in her arms. 

Harleen doesn’t pay attention during the walk back to her office, isn’t sure what the guards or her patient said, if anything, when she shared that the session was over. There could have been blood on the walls and she probably wouldn’t have noticed. She doesn’t recollect dumping her notes on her desk, flipping to a new piece of notepad paper, and leaving a short note to Joan. She scribbled that she was stepping out for lunch and would type her notes upon her return, though something in the back of her head questioned if the superior doctor would actually see the note or care if the note was slipped under her respective door. Harleen crushed the paper in her hand before tossing it in the plastic waste bin under her desk. Locking her office behind her, Harleen walked briskly through the halls of the asylum, loose strands of her blonde ponytail flowing with her pace. She didn’t register saying anything to the guard sitting at the front desk, if she told him she would be back later, didn’t acknowledge the transition of sounds from her feet on the tile floor to the asphalt of the parking lot. She yanked open the door to her car, shut it firmly behind her, and gripped her steering wheel with white knuckles and sweaty palms. She screamed.

She screamed from deep in her stomach, a frustrated noise echoing inside the confines of her car, circling down to her eardrums. Her forehead hit the top of her steering wheel, slightly jarring her with the impact, but she continued to voice her concerns, let out a shout every time her fist slammed onto the grip of her steering wheel, glasses slipping down her nose.

“What is happening to me?” Harleen asked herself, fingertips digging into her temples, the impending feeling of tears prickling the back of her eyes. “Why do I let him do this to me? Why do I let him affect me like this? Why do I give him the satisfaction?” She asked herself as her tears slowly rolled out of her eyes and down her furiously blushed cheeks. “Where does he get off thinking he can control me,  _ own me _ , like this? What kind of joke even is this?”

She took a few deep breaths, shaky inhales into her shivering lungs, her heart pounding against her chest. 

“He is a criminal, Harleen. You can’t forget that. He’s insane, he’s diabolical, he’s a mastered manipulator, and you’re playing right into his hand.” She hit the steering wheel once again, the cool of the bracelet grabbing her attention. Scowling, she yanked it off and tossed it over her shoulder, where she heard it hit the floor behind her. She sighed, running her hands along the top of her head, scraping her fingernails along her scalp, trying to ground herself.

“You have to stay professional. You cannot jeopardize this job. He is just another patient, he is no one special. From here on it, you control the therapy sessions. You control your thoughts and emotions. You dominate the session and don’t give him the chance to get the upper hand.” She straightened her glasses and sat up straight. “You are not going to fall victim to this disillusioned, psychotic, mentally disturbed clown.”  


End file.
